Wine

Well it’s not cheap, but it’s very good. Importer: Mondo Imports.

From memory, this is the unoaked wine, or at least no new oak, if not stainless steel only.

Total production of 150 dozen. Eden Road rarely send me any wine, but with this set of 2012 Chardonnay I’m glad they did: the pleasure has been all mine.

The New South Wales wine catch cry of ‘Ask for it’, is one of the more ridiculous pieces of marketing I’ve come across, although in this case you might change it to ‘Beg for it’. This uses 15% new oak, and is beautifully made.

With the increasing pace of technological and social change taking place in our lives, we at VinTank strive to provide our users with the best tools to stay ahead of the curve. To maintain that goal, we come across many great articles and resources that we use to keep our bearing. Every week we will share the best from both inside and outside of our industry. We would love to hear your thoughts or questions as to how we can help put these ideas to work for you. How Wine Criticism Is Changing Consumers don’t need-or want-centralized gatekeepers telling them what they should or shouldn’t drink. Consumers still need advisors, of course, but when today’s consumers want information, they’re willing to look past professional critics and instead turn to friends and trusted networks. With travel, restaurants, movies, and so much else, this trend would hardly be worthy of commentary. TripAdvisor long ago supplanted paper-based guides like Frommer’s. Yelp is now the holy grail of restaurant reviews, and local blogs are increasingly influential. With movies, opening the local newspaper for commentary no longer makes sense when you can check out dozens of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. With wine, however, this shift runs counter to so much of what’s sacred. Everything about wine-the bizarre tasting rituals, knowledge of obscure regions and varietals, and identifying good values-is supposed to be handed down from on high. Read more… VinTank’s Twist It’s well understood that consumers are turning to the internet and social networks for hotel or restaurant recommendations. This is now the reality for the wine industry as well. Take CellarTracker for instance, “about 800,000 people visit the site each month, and more than 2,200 wines are reviewed on the site each day. This means CellarTracker users review more wines in just six days than Robert Parker reviews in an entire year”. Our platform tracks your mentions across many sources at once, including CellarTracker and other widely used tasting note websites. Log in to your VinTank account to see on your dashboard any new tasting notes from a variety of sources. If you click on the tasting notes section, you will see them all in one place. The ‘Unfashionable’ Semillon Grape Gets Dirty and Rowdy in Napa “Semillon is not a fashionable variety,” announces Wine Grapes. “Nowhere outside Sauternes,” the book continues, “does there seem to be a groundswell of enthusiasm for this noble variety.” Time for a re-write, Wine Grapes. A “Semageddon” party went down in Napa last week, devoted entirely to this oh-so “unfashionable” Semillon grape. The party was attended by wine lovers and winemakers-many of them among the most influential in California today. There were four picnic tables, three ice buckets, and two coolers filled with bottles of Semillon gathered from around the world. The clincher: custom-made Semillon T-shirts!! Groundswell of enthusiasm?? In your face. Originally from Bordeaux and used in both dry and sweet wines there, it’s true that Semillon isn’t exactly mainstream in California (yet?). Wine Grapes says that less than 900 acres of it existed in the state in 2010.  Read more… VinTank’s Twist In statistics, a long tail is the portion of a distribution having a large number of occurrences far from the “head” or central part of the distribution. It is a term used in online business, mass media, micro-finance, user-driven innovation, and social network mechanisms (e.g. crowdsourcing, crowdcasting, peer-to-peer), economic models, and marketing (viral marketing). It is important to note that what we are going to see from the interconnectedness of networks, is that there will be new markets for non-traditional brands or varieties. If you find yourself in the “long-tail” of the wine market, fret not, hike up y

Sailing boat entering St Katharine's DockThe Michael Patrick (Mil'Pat) heads up towards St Katharine's Dock and Tower Bridge (above and below) Waiting to enter the dock (above and below) Heading into St Katharine's Dock A wave from 'Anjou Pur Breton' Isabelle Legeron MW in red coatMichel Patrick Olivier Cousin preparing for a new role! Isabelle's delight at arriving before the crew and passengers drank all the wine! Mil'Pat in the lock waiting to proceedTribunal d'Angers: an impromptu hearing! Mil'Pat approaching her berth Journey's endLe Capitaine.... ... boire avec modération Unloading the cargo Wine for the RAW wine fair

The grapes from which distilled products and fortified wines are made often get no love in terms of being used for table wines, the exceptions being the red grapes grown in the Douro Valley that traditionally go into Port. Few people would rally round ugni blanc as a producer of great wines, yet it’s the principle grape in Cognac. Similarly, you will find few advocates of California’s old mission grape as the source of fine wine — no one attests to the drinkability of sacramental wine — but the humble grape can find a higher calling in fortified dessert wines, one such splendid example being the Angelica produced by Swanson Vineyards from a vineyard in Amador County planted in 1856. Yes, these gnarled ancient vines still deliver a few intense grapes every year, enough to make about two barrels of this Angelica that aged six years in neutral oak barrels and was bottled in July 2010. Immediately after fermentation, the wine was fortified with brandy to 19 percent alcohol. Angelica is what’s called “non-vintage,” meaning, really, that it derives from several vintages. The Angelica nv, Amador County, offers a ruddy, dark amber color of beautiful transparency and luminosity. Aromas of cloves, toffee, orange zest and maple syrup are woven with notes of toasted coconut and roasted hazelnuts, cinnamon and fruitcake and an intriguing sort of wheatmeal-graham flour earthiness. Sweet? Oh, hell, yeah, like bananas Foster is sweet, like chocolate bread pudding is sweet — and there are tantalizing touches of each here — but tingling, lip-smacking acidity and a deepening close to startling spicy nature temper the sweetness from mid-palate back through the finish that surprisingly brings in a shade of graphite-like minerality. The texture goes beyond supple to ethereal. Drink from now until Doomsday; I mean this stuff is probably immortal. Production was 350 six-bottle cases. Excellent. About $140. A sample for review.

Clean, glowing white onyx imported from Mexico formed the gorgeous tasting bar that introduced me to DAOU Vineyards and Winery. Delightful taste treats of fine cheeses, home-roasted pistachios, quince and delicious, earthy green olives in their own oil were placed to my right. Daniel Daou approached, smiled warmly, and proceeded to not only wow me with his wines, but he also conveyed his winemaking passion and philosophy with precision, depth and best of all, contagion. Daniel presides over an amazingly gorgeous setting on his mountaintop vineyards and facility in Paso Robles. The higher elevation of his vineyards means his grapes develop in temperatures an average of almost 10 degrees lower than the sometimes-oppressive heat of some other regions in the Paso AVA. In fact, Daniel likens the DAOU climate with that of Oakville in Napa (and, as you will see below, that is one of his favorite AVAs), and the calcerous soils around him with those of France. Daniel does not add acid to his fermenting grapes, as his vines per acre are almost 3.5 times what others nearby have, while his clusters per vine are two to three times smaller. He believes these factors combine to allow proper ripeness and vine stress, which results in soft tannins and solid acid levels. Additionally, he pays a hefty electric bill to keep his cellar at a frosty 50 degrees so that the chill, not the normal addition of extra sulfites, keeps any unwanted bacteria from spoiling his wine during barrel aging. Finally, Daniel even managed to make a long conversation about cabernet clones pretty riveting. I sampled a number of his wines and will report on those later, but suffice it to say, his passion is obvious in his 100% free run whites and reds. They dazzled. Let’s get to know more about Daniel…. http://winetable.com/blog/winemaker-in-the-spotlight-daniel-daou/ The post WineMaker Spotlight, Winemakers, Daniel Daou, DAOU Vineyards and Winery, Paso Robles, California, USA appeared first on BrainWines.com.

Anti-frost device in Touraine Noble-Joué There was a widespread hope that the late budbreak this year would mean that growers would avoid a spring frost in 2013. After the quite widespread frost of mid-April last year, especially in Touraine, the last thing anyone needed was a second frost. Unfortunately the late budding has only meant that the damaging frost came later this year – in the early morning of Monday 29th April. The 29th April frost appears to be less extensive and more localised than that of last year – 16th/17th April – but some areas, especially Montlouis, have been badly hit with reports of damage up to 80%. Unfortunately Montlouis was badly hit in 2012, so this is very bad news for any producer severely hit two years running. Even in Montlouis I gather that the damage although severe is patchy with some parts hardly affected if at all. I expect to gather more news at the RAW wine fair tomorrow. Here are two reports from La Vigne on the frost: Val de Loire Coup de gel sur le Saumurois Pour la deuxième année consécutive, certains producteurs du Saumurois ne vont pas remplir leurs cuves. On s’en souvient : 2012 avait été maigre pour tous. Alors que les feuilles viennent de faire leur apparition, quelques zones ont été frappées par un coup de gel ce lundi 29 avril à l’aube, où des températures autour de - 3°C ont été enregistrées au niveau du sol. http://www.lavigne-mag.fr/actualites/val-de-loire-coup-de-gel-sur-le-saumurois-71717.html Touraine Quelques dégâts de gel dans plusieurs AOC Publié le mardi 07 mai 2013 - 16h44 Le 29 avril, le thermomètre est descendu sous la barre des 0°C, provoquant quelques dégâts dans les vignes d’Indre-et-Loire et du Loir-et-Cher. Mais ils sont sans commune mesure avec ceux de l’an passé.La gelée printanière du 29 avril a provoqué des dégâts en Indre-et-Loire. Sur l’ouest du département, dans les AOC de Chinon, Bourgueil et Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, 10 à 20 % des bourgeons ont été détruits, selon la chambre d’agriculture.À l’est de Tours, Montlouis-sur-Loire a été plus touchée, avec 30 % de dégâts en moyenne, mais certaines parcelles ont été endommagées jusqu’à 80 %, voire 100 % pour des plantations de 2012. Le gel a également eu un lourd impact sur des vignes en AOC Touraine Azay-le-Rideau. http://www.lavigne-mag.fr/actualites/touraine-quelques-degats-de-gel-dans-plusieurs-aoc-71885.html

Tried this today: it’s a brilliant Austrian skin-contact white. Just beautiful: one of the best examples of an ‘orange’ wine that I have tried. Schell Mann Achtung Wine 2007 Thermenregion, Austria From Fred Loimer, this is a skin-contact white (an ‘orange’ wine) made from Grüner Veltliner, Muskateller, Rotgipfler, Traminer, Zierfandler, all grown together in a mixed vineyard planted in 1936. It’s amazingly fresh and aromatic with lovely peach, melon and citrus aromas, as well as some spice. The palate is fresh, vital and quite grippy with lovely fruit chartacters and a nice spicy, dry finish. It’s actually a full yellow colour – not orange. A remarkable wine of real precision and interest. 94/100 Find this wine with wine-searcher.com