Wine

On Wine: Grill-ready zins, including five under $20: The Santa Cruz Mountains aren't really known for zinfande...

For the second year in a row, Nomacorc is helping lead the way in wine closure recycling at the Wine Bloggers Conference. This year, Nomacorc will be collecting all types of corks during the conference, and they’ll be working with new partners to ensure that used closures are recycled and upcycled in the most efficient and effective way. Partnering with retailers across the U.S. has allowed Nomacorc to regionalize recycling programs and focus on supporting local communities. For example, in Texas, they’ve placed bins at Spec’s Wine & Spirits’110 store locations to collect used closures, which are “upcycled,” or repurposed for other uses like crafting. All proceeds generated from this upcycling program are donated to a local breast cancer awareness program. In Washington, Nomacorc has partnered with Total Wine & More and AtWork! to help streamline the cork collection process. Located just outside of Seattle, AtWork! is a highly supportive and innovative conduit between adults with disabilities and mainstream employers that provides customized jobs for AtWork! participants. After closures are collected at Total Wine, they are sent to AtWork!, where employees will separate and sort natural and synthetic corks, which are then sold to various recyclers. Currently, there’s strong demand for post-consumer synthetic corks, and most synthetic corks can be recycled and made into many plastic-based items including cell phone cases, park benches and outdoor plastic tiling. All proceeds generated from the sales of the used corks are donated back to the AtWork! program. Based on our location, all closures collected during this year’s Wine Bloggers Conference will be recycled via the AtWork! offices in Bellevue, Washington. You’ll also see new collection bins for the conference this year. In addition to our large collection bins, Nomacorc has created smaller, more convenient tabletop containers. Made from recycled plastic, these cube boxes will be placed on tasting tables throughout the conference, making it easier for pourers to recycle closures after uncorking. Each day, the cube containers will be emptied into the larger bins. At the end of the conference Nomacorc will recycle all used closures via the AtWork! center. So, when you taste that crisp, refreshing glass of Okanagan Pinot Gris at WBC this year, do your part to be eco-conscious by dropping off used closures into one of Nomacorc’s Cork Recovery Bins. See you in Penticton! The post Nomacorc Cork Recovery Program at WBC13 appeared first on Wine Bloggers Conference.

Dear Readers: Again this blog has been named a finalist in the Best Wine Review Blog category in the Wine Blog Awards. If you appreciate what I do here and profit from the approach I take in terms of writing about and describing wines and providing background information of a historical, geographical, technical and philosophical nature, then I in turn would appreciate your vote. Here’s a link to the awards page: http://wineblogawards.org/from-the-organizers/the-finalists-in-the-2013-wine-blog-awards-are-announced/ Thanks for your confidence and for your readership.

A French study found chemical residues in wines, but at low levels; experts hope to eliminate need

On our way out of Rovinj, we meandered along the country roads of Istria, in to the village of Zminj.  Here, we were going to take part in a traditional lunch at a konoba, or tavern.  When we pulled up, I wasn’t quite sure if we were at someone’s house, or a public dining establishment, but as it turns out, it was a bit of each. Much like the small restaurants throughout western Europe, there was no menu, we just ate what we were served.  It was a chilly, drizzly day, and I was happy to duck inside and sit down next to the fire at Konoba Puli Pineta.  The owner and master chef, Josip Pino Kihar, is well known in Croatia and comes from a rich cultural history of cooking.  His name, the name of his village, and everything leads to the word “cook”.  As you can see from Liza’s pictures, he can cook! First up, as we dried off in front of the hearth, was a Rakija tasting.  Yes, more rakija!  This nectar of the gods is Croatia’s version of Grappa, the distilled spirit usually made from grapes.  Here in Istria, it is also called Grappa, so you might see those terms interchanged.  Pineta‘s offerings were fig, cherry, and regular, and it was just the thing to wake up the Wine Premacy! The first course was a simple dish of local cheese, grilled (well, fried).  This local cow cheese is fried up in local olive oil and was pure YUM!  And what meal in this part of Europe would be complete with out the prosciutto?  Platters of delicious cured meats were presented, again with the local olive oil, as well as the simple, delicious red and wine wines of the Konoba. As we sat stuffing ourselves, two types of hand rolled pasta, one with an Italian style tomato sauce, and one with pure heaven, were served family style.  I was bursting at the seams, but I couldn’t let that delicious pasta go to waste!  As we ate the pasta, a beautiful piece of steak was busily sizzling in a grill on the fire, smelling divine.  As the buttery, amazingly simply meat was served, teh final course was prepared.  The Istrian tradition of Supa, soup of red wine, olive oil, bread and other amazing things, was set to simmer on the fire as well. The Supa is to be drunk from the earthen crock, sharing around the table, and so we did – drinking warm wine souop, sipping rakija, and remarking on the stunningly fresh, and delicious food. If you are ever in Istria, make it a point to stop by this amazing, tiny, wonderful, stunning dining experience!

A collection of links from the reporters and editors of the Dining section.

craig.camp posted a photo:

craig.camp posted a photo:

I assembled her new table and chairs while she was napping…

A review of the Binyamina Reserve Unoaked Chardonnay 2011 and the Highland Park Loki 15-year-old single malt Scotch Whisky. By Joshua E. London and Lou Marmon Washington Jewish Week  May 9, 2013 Last week we noted that a wine’s flavors are primarily the result of how and where the grapes are grown coupled with the skill of winemaker, and that wine is essentially free of additives. There are parts of the wine producing world where the nonadditive approach is simply common practice and well-established tradition, while there are other regions where this sort of nonadditive winemaking is actually regulated. Even where regulation prevails, however, there are sometimes stipulated allowances for certain invasive steps and ingredients. In some regions for example, where grapes develop with low sugar content, the winemakers are permitted to add some sugar to provide more sugar than the grapes can do on their own for the yeast to ferment into alcohol (this is commonly referred to as “chaptalization”). Another common additive is sulfur dioxide (SO2), generally noted with the slightly alarming all caps, “CONTAINS SULFITES,” on the back of most wine labels. Even though this sounds bad, sulfites are naturally occurring anyway because wine yeasts produce sulfur dioxide during the fermentation process. Indeed, wines with no added sulfites contain anywhere from 6 to 40 parts per million of sulfite already. Additional sulfites are added merely to preserve freshness and stop fermentation in fruits and juices. Sulfite use has been in vogue since Roman times. In modern winemaking, sulfur is used as an antiseptic to kill yeast, bacteria and molds, and sulfur is also used as an antioxidant because it can inhibit enzymes that cause oxidation. Mostly though, as we noted last week, the most frequent “additive” to wine is simply the use of oak barrels, either as the vessel used for fermentation or, more commonly, as the vessel used for aging the wine. Various types of oak have diverse effects upon the wines. For example, American oak is thought to impart more vanilla flavors into wine as compared to French oak. The interior of the barrels are also “charred” or “toasted” by fire to various degrees by the cooperages, depending on the species of oak and the specifications of the client. It is up to the winemaker to choose the oak type, toast level and duration of contact with the developing wine. Occasionally, in any given harvest (“vintage” in wine-speak), some of the wine may be given, say, medium toasted American oak treatment while other wine might be given lightly toasted French oak treatment, and then all of the barrels will be blended together for the final product. Since oak barrels are expensive, some wineries merely add oak chips or staves of oak barrels to the stainless steel tanks in order to approximate some of the same effects of actual barrel Aegina. The positive influences of oak are upon the color, body, texture and character of the wines. However it can also be used to mask flaws and, for a while, there was a tendency toward too much oak, resulting in some wines tasting more like twigs than fruit. Not surprisingly the pendulum has shifted. Now there are wines that the consumer had associated with oak-aging that are increasingly being made in stainless steel, with no oak influence at all. Chardonnay has long been made into noteworthy wines without seeing any wood at all. The advocates of “unoaked” Chardonnays believe that the wood masks the wine and that unoaked more accurately expresses the nuances of the grape. A kosher Israeli example is the Binyamina Reserve Unoaked Chardonnay 2011, a vibrantly flavored wine expressing loads of peach, pineapple, orange and melons on a medium frame with a clean, mineral laced finish. Spirits-wise, rather than leap headlong into another discussion of oak and whisky we thought we’d return to