WINO 101

Hello Friends and Wine Lovers!

Welcome to the Super Summer Sipping, Slurping, and Swigging Spectacular! Or so I stated it seven sunrises and sunsets, since. (Last week). And so it stands still! Seven superb s— . . . stop me! I just can’t keep up this alliteration. Okay. It’s the Carpe Vinum Tasting of the Week and Newsletter! As stated earlier, it’s a summery wine symposium! So it seems summer has certainly surfaced, supposing September sees such sweltering subsisting. Ack! I did it again! It gets addictive, such language. But I digressss.

Tomorrow’s wines are a selection of many of the best white wines I’ve had all summer. These are all wines I’ve tried throughout the summer. Some are best performers during the tastings. Some were crowd favorites. Some were wines that I thought needed further attention. But all of these were the ones that came home with me most often during these, the hottest days of summer.

Starting the selection is the Sanguineti Vincero Toscana Bianco, a wonderful Italian white I had special ordered about 8 months ago. It’s made with Malvasia, Vermintino and Chardonnay. That’s right. I used the “C” word there. You can’t base the wine on that one grape. Have you ever heard of the other two? Didn’t think so. This one has not been featured in a tasting this summer, but it’s about time it has. This may be my favorite of this year.

Secondly we’ve got the Woodinville Sauvignon Blanc. It was featured during the last Washington tasting back in July. I compared it side-by-side with a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand and a Menetou Salon from the French Loire. The Woodinville reigned as my favorite of the bunch as well as many Sauvignon Blancs in recent memory. The region where the winery is located is Woodinville, an area near Seattle that appears to be a new haven for wineries, and a place to keep watching.

Next we’ve got my favorite Soave from Inama. Many agree that this is the finest Soave house in the Italian Veneto. Someday we may have to have a Soave shootout, perhaps a blind tasting. Until then, we can take their word for it. Who is “they” in that statement? “They” in that statement is the “Many” from the statement before it. You know . . . because that’s what “they” say, right?

I’ll sum up the next three into one paragraph so I don’t ramble on all night. We’ve got three wines made with grape varieties from the French Rhone. These make full-bodied whites, often with bodacious, fruity character; tropical fruit, spice, cream. There are two, the Cline from Carneros in California and the Torbreck from Australia’s Barossa Valley, made with the lovely Marsanne and Roussanne grapes, a magical pairing known well for centuries in the Northern Rhone. Then we have one of my favorite whites from the Southern Rhone, Domaine Lafond’s Lirac Blanc, made with Roussanne, Viognier and Grenache Blanc.

Finishing the lineup is one from the home country. And it’s a celebratory wine. With bubbles! It’s Argyle’s 1999 Blanc de Blancs, potentially one of the best I’ve had from that house and one of the best bubblies I’ve had from Oregon. I figure popping the top off a bubbly, frothy sparkler is the perfect conclusion to the final tasting of the summer. What?!? The end of summer, already? Well, it may not be the end of the heat, but the “calendar” summer technically does end with Labor Day, doesn’t it? Dang.

So Friday, August 31st, between 4:30 and 9:00 PM it’s:

Super Summery Sipping Symposium!!!
Sanguineti 2006 Vincero Toscano Bianco, Tuscany, Italy
Woodinville 2006 Sauvignon Blanc, Columbia Valley, Washington
Inama 2005 Soave Foscarino, Veneto, Italy
Cline 2006 Marsanne/Roussanne, Carneros, California
Domaine Lafond 2005 Lirac Blanc, Rhone Valley, France

Simply Superlative Sipping Spectacular!!!
Torbreck 2006 Marsanne/Roussanne, Barossa Valley, Australia
Argyle 1999 Blanc de Blancs, Dundee Hills, Oregon

A stellar deal at $10 for the First 5, $6 for the Extra 2 Premium Pours.

Hope to see you here!

Seize the Wine!

Next Friday tasting is Austria!

M

Hello Friends and Wine Lovers!

It’s time! You know what time? It’s Thursday! Is “Thursday” really a time? Well, maybe it’s a broad sense of a period of time. But Thursday it is, and that means it’s time for the Carpe Vinum Newsletter of the Week Time, and High Time to Take the Time to Announce the Tasting of the Week! And it’s just in time. What are we tasting this time? Get ready for this, because it’s always a good time: It’s the Wines of Oregon (time)!

We live in Oregon. Well, no . . . not necessarily you, given the international audience we’ve got for these weekly ramblings. By “we” I mean “me”, the party of one, here at the shop. Well, most of you on this list do actually live in Oregon, but let me get back on track here. I’m proud to be living in Oregon. We’ve got all kinds of things: Mountains, rivers, oceanfront property, a basketball team, dry and arid desert scrubbrush, squishy and mossy rainforests, salmon, hippies, hipsters, hippopotamuses, hip-boot-waders, hip-hip-hooray, hippidy-doo-dah, and so on. Also . . . We’ve got wine.

Apparently every state in the country makes wine of some sort. Some states are better suited for the grape-growing than others, and other states make wine from other fruits that grow where grapes can’t. That being said, I think we could rate Oregon wines within the top 3 states of a hotly contested race of best-wine-states, but when it comes to Pinot Noir, we got it goin’ on. Every year the Oregon Pinot Noir gets more recognition around the world, and the number of wineries seems to increase exponentially. It’s like the Pinot Noir Gold Rush. We call it “Purple Gold”! (Okay, nobody calls it that . . . but let’s hope it catches on.)

Now, Pinot love aside, there is a lot more growing in Oregon than just the “Purple Gold”. That seems to be the majority of what we hear about, and that makes sense. The wineries know which side their bread is buttered on, to follow that old cliché. But if you butter your bread on ALL sides, you . . . uh, you get your hands all greasy. Wait, where was I going with that? Ah. It makes sense to hype the breadwinner (or butterer), but we’ve got a lot more to offer than Pinot Noir, and a lot more affordable things too.

So I’ve pieced together a diverse selection of Oregon varieties. There are so many new and interesting things going on in the Oregon winemaking field that a tasting every day of the year wouldn’t cover it all. So we do what little we can, and enjoy it as best as possible! In the lineup we’ve got an Auxerrois (aw-sher-wah), a grape variety you might remember from the Alsace tasting last week. It’s rare and delicious. We’ve got the Oregon resident veterans of Riesling and Pinot Gris, both summery and refreshing. We’ve got a rose of Tempranillo from Southern Oregon, and a red blend from the Columbia Valley.

Then we have two of the quintessential Pinot Noir. The first is the whole-cluster fermented Pinot Noir from Willamette Valley Vineyards. Whole-cluster fermentation, a method they use in Beaujolais, is the carbonic maceration method where grapes are not crushed but fermented while inside the skins. This creates lighter and fruitier flavors and aromas. Then we have your regular super-charged-take-on-the-whole-world Pinot Noir from Erath, one of Oregon’s winemaking pioneers, growing and squashing grapes for almost 40 years. It’s the full spectrum set for the sampling!

So Friday, August 24th, between 4:30 and 9:00 PM it’s:

Oregon!!!
Adelsheim 2006 Auxerrois, Willamette Valley
Anam Cara 2006 Riesling, Nicholas Estate, Willamette Valley
Roots 2006 Pinot Gris, Yamhill-Carlton
Abacela 2006 Rosado of Tempranillo, Estate Grown, Umpqua Valley
Willamette Valley Vineyards 2006 Whole Cluster Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley

M’Oregon!!!
Erath 2005 Estate Selection Pinot Noir, Dundee Hills
Sineann 2005 Red Blend, Columbia Valley

A stellar deal at $10 for the First 5, $6 for the Extra 2 Premium Pours.

Hope to see you here!

Seize the Wine!

Next Friday tasting is Super Summer Sipping, Slurping, and Swigging Spectacular!

M

Hello Friends and Wine Lovers!

Welcome to the Mid-August Stretch and Summer Savoring and Sampling Symposium with the Weekly Carpe Vinum Friday Tasting and Newsletter of Super-Tastiness! Last week we were in Germany sampling the fine wines they have to offer, and this week we’re not going too far from that. We’re heading to the French Alsace! It’s the most French part of Germany! Or is it the most Germanic part of France?

Alsace has always been a disputed part of Europe. The region, on France’s Eastern border with Germany, has been a veritable tug-o-war between the two countries for centuries. Every time a war breaks out, the region gets captured, and then returned at the end of the war. As a result of this constant dispute, the people of Alsace are technically neither French nor German, and they speak Alsacien, a dialect that is neither French nor German, but a bit of both. And the wines? Yep. They’re specifically Alsatian as well.

Unlike most of the other French wines which are named and labeled after the regions in which they are grown, Alsace is one of the only French regions that state the grape variety names on the labels. In fact, most of the wine marketed in Alsace are single-varietal wines. For that reason, Alsatian wines are more easily understood of any of the French wines as the labeling resembles more closely the wines of the New World.

So of these grape varieties grown, most are white. There is only one red in the region. It’s the current rising star of the world, even still reeling from some independent movie a couple of years ago. Yep. Pinot Noir. Our savory savior. There’s not much of it grown there and, like everywhere else in the world, they’re highly sought-after and therefore awfully expensive. Are Alsatian Pinots good? Apparently so, considering I’ve never been able to afford one. The other varieties are Riesling, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Sylvaner, Muscat, Gewurztraminer, Auxerrois, Chasselas (mostly used in blending) and Klevener de Heilingenstein (which apparently exists, but we’d all be pretty hard-pressed to prove it).

From there we’ve got a couple other things of note. There’s Cremant d’Alsace, which is the sparkling wine of the region that I find to be more pleasant and more affordable than Champagne and most other sparkling wines. Also, considering the colder climate up there in Alsace, there are a number of dessert wines designated “Vendage Tardive”. That literally translates to “Late Harvest” and is one of my favorite wine terms, just by the way it sounds. Vendage Tardive. Sounds like a good name for a band. But I digress.

Then there are the Grand Cru wines from the best locations in Alsace. These wines work like the regular single-varietal wines, but all come from specific locales and/or vineyards and the labels carry these names, as well. These wines are pretty limited quantity, and highly sought-after, so they’re hard to find and pretty expensive, at that. For the purposes of this tasting, we’ll be taking a tour through many common varieties of the Alsatian varieties. One thing for sure, though, is they’re all perfect summer wines, and my favorite for this time of year.

Also: Art Opening! That’s right! We’ve got new art on the walls here at Carpe Vinum. I always seem to forget to mention it when it happens, but not this time! We’ve got the photographic art of Rachell Coe. It’s potentially the most appropriate art showing we’ve had in here, as the subject matter is expertly and delightfully well-done photos of grapes and vineyards. You will love the show if you like and appreciate wine, and I imagine you do considering you’re on a wine newsletter list. The demographic is right, hey?

So Friday, August 17th, between 4:30 and 9:00 PM it’s:

Alsace!!!
Sparr NV Cremant d’Alsace
Kuentz Bas 2004 Alsace Blanc
Domaine Rolly Gassmann 2004 Sylvanner
Maison Bott Freres 2004 Pinot Blanc
Dopff Irion 2004 Tokay Pinot Gris

Mor’Alsace!!!
Andre Kientzler 2004 Auxerrois “K”
M Deiss 2001 Pinot Noir

A stellar deal at $10 for the First 5, $6 for the Extra 2 Premium Pours.

Hope to see you here!

Seize the Wine!

Next Friday tasting is Wines! Of! Oregon!

M

Hello Friends and Wine Lovers!

Welcome to the Carpe Vinum Newsletter of the Week and Tasting Announcement, new and improved with an experimental slightly-larger text! (Online posting notwithstanding). It’s an exciting week, this second week of August, and time for the Carpe Vinum Annual Symposium of German and Austrian Wines! Or at least that’s how I was advertising it. But once I started choosing the wines I was interested in pouring, I realized it wasn’t fair to either Germany or Austria to combine the two wine regions into one tasting. The regions just have different enough wines to each have their own tasting. So this week, rather than Germany and Austria, it’s just Germany. Why Germany first? Well, I drew their names out of a hat and Germany came first. Okay, not really. No hat. Reverse-alphabetical order? Okay, it was random.

Speaking of random, German wines are so totally not random. In fact, the German wine laws are so confusing and fascinating and structured, I figure that’s a good place to start. Well, actually we’ll start with Riesling. To know German wines is to know that the majority of the German production is Riesling, and makes up the majority of German wine exports. Why Riesling? The grape variety can perform under stress, with a minimum of moisture, and is frost resistant. So it does well in colder climates and harsher conditions, both of which Germany possesses, all while showing distinct terroir of the growing regions and is also suitable for long aging. The more Northern wine regions of Germany grow predominantly Riesling and some other white grapes and the Southern districts have a few more reds mixed in. We’ll get to the reds later.

Okay, I heard a few of you roll over when you saw the mention of Riesling. This is a constant battle everyone in the wine industry has to deal with. Over the years there have been many bad and overly sweet, perhaps sugary, probably domestic Rieslings that have tainted the name of this noble varietal. Keep in mind that although Rieslings can have higher-than-normal residual sugar at harvest, vinification reduces this and acid levels balances this out. So although Rieslings may tend to have a touch more sweetness than many white wines, most are vinified dry (“Trocken” in German wines) or otherwise are reasonably balanced.

This leads us to the next confusing subject of the German wine laws and classification system. (I hope to make this easy and painless.) This complex system gives designations to the ripeness of the grapes at harvest as measured by sugar levels. Keep in mind this isn’t the sugar level of the finished wine. The winemaker has control over that, and can vinify them dry. The designations, from regular-harvest to late-harvest are:

Tafelwein (Literally “table wine” – rarely imported)
Qualitatswein or QbA (most widely available)
Kabinett (also widely available)
Spatelese (late-harvest)
Auslese (late-late-harvest)
Beerenauslese (late-late-late-harvest)
Trockenbeerenauslese (late-late-late-late-harvest-and-probably-rotten)
Eiswein (way-late-harvest-and-rotten-and-frozen-and-harvested-by-hand)

In essence, this classification is telling you that the grapes were able to attain a certain ripeness. Generally, and what they’re getting at with this, the higher the sugar level indicates more ripeness. With more ripeness you have more flavor. In theory. The first five categories make dry to off-dry wines, for the most part. Auslese could be pushed into the dessert-wine zone. And the last three make dessert wines, considering the sugar levels are so high at harvest that the fermentation halts before all the sugar is gone. Also, the last three are most-likely infected with the noble rot (botrytis cinerea or, in German, Edelfaule), partially or wholly raisinated, and in the case of the Eiswein, frozen. Also, also, they are picked by hand, and thusly, terribly expensive.

Whew. That wasn’t so bad, was it? It seems so structured and German, doesn’t it? At any rate, it makes more of an interesting tasting to try these different designations together to see what they might mean in practice. So I grabbed Rieslings in the Qba, Spatlese and Auslese categories. I could have run the full gamut, but that would be missing out on a lot more that Germany has to offer. German reds!

There aren’t a lot of reds grown in the region, and the ones that are tend to be consumed within Germany. The main red varietal in Germany is the Pinot Noir. I think we all know that varietal, by now. But considering its popularity everywhere, and scarcity over there, we don’t see a lot of it coming to this country. There are a number of other red varieties, too numerous to mention them all, and also scarcely grown. I found one of these oddball wines, a Dornfelder, which was apparently made from a grape engineered to withstand Germany’s harsher and colder climate, yet still produces a firm, tannic wine.

Also, we’ve got a Gewurztraminer! For those of you who just rolled over at the sound of that, go back and see the first comments about Riesling.

Austria, you get your own tasting next month. California’s Governor would be proud.

So Friday, August 10th, between 4:30 and 9:00 PM it’s:

Germany!!!
Valkenberg 2005 Gewurztraminer, Pfalz
Schloss Wallhausen 2005 Two Princes Riesling QbA, Nahe
Weingut Ackermann 2005 Riesling Spatlese Zeltinger Schlossberg, Mosel-Saar-Ruwer
Villa Wolf 2006 Rose de Pinot Noir, Pfalz
Wachtenbeurg Winzer 2005 Dornfelder, Pfalz

More Germany!!!
Schloss Saarstein 1999 Serriger Riesling Auslese, Mosel-Saar-Ruwer
Weinhaus Heger 2005 Pinot Noir, Baden

A stellar deal at $10 for the First 5, $6 for the Extra 2 Premium Pours.

Hope to see you here!

Seize the Wine!

(See how I didn’t make any cracks about Kraftwerk or David Hasselhoff? Whoops. Except for this. Dang!)

Next Friday tasting is French Alsace!

M

Hello Friends and Wine Lovers!

Welcome to the Newsletter for the Announcement for the Tasting for the Friday that is August 3rd for the Wine shop that is Carpe Vinum! August 3rd is an important day. In Kentucky, it’s Watermelon Day! So for all of our Kentucky readers, happy Watermelon Day! In Venezuela, it’s Flag Day! So for all of our Venezuelan readers, happy Flag Day! It’s also the tasting that is the closest to the day that is the smack-dab-middle-of-summer, which is Monday. But for everyone else, it’s a tasting of seven fine wines from Northeast Italy!

“Northeast Italy,” you may ask, “Isn’t that kinda vague? Couldn’t you be more specific?”

“No.” I may reply, then I may correct myself by saying “Yes. No. Wait. One question at a time. Ack.”

So, yes. Northeast Italy as a region encompasses a lot of area. But the specific regions within are smaller, and sometimes it’s better to lump them all together for a better feel of the regional styles. Also, let’s face it: It’s three days from the smack-dab-middle-of-summer, and it’s hot. It’s too hot to be thinking about red wines. A crisp white wine is where it’s at. And when I’m thinking Italy, and when I’m thinking white wine, my gaze goes Northeast. Well, not Northeast, like gazing thoughtlessly out the window in a midsummer night’s daydream. I look to the Northeast of Italy. We’re talking specifically about Friuli, Trentino-Alto Adige, and Veneto: Makers of some of the finest white wines in the world.

First we’ve got Friuli. It’s the region the Easternmost of our pre-drawn borders of Northeastern Italy. Well, that is to say that’s it’s the Easternmost point of Italy itself. Friuli borders both Austria and Slovenia and although the winemaking styles themselves may not be directly affected by the Historic Slavic and Germanic influence, everything else that defines the style most likely have. Like the people and the cuisine. There are a great variety of tasty whites to be had here, ranging from traditional varieties of Chardonnay, Pinot Gris (Grigio), Gewurztraminer, and so on, it’s the native grapes that capture my attention. Grapes like Ribolla Giala and Tocai Friuliano. There are some reds in the area: Cabernets, Merlots, and some decent Cab Francs. Perhaps they’re not spectacular but we’ll argue that on another day. When it isn’t so hot.

Next we’ve got Trentino-Alto Adige. The region, as one could assume by the presence of a hyphen, is actually two separate regions. They’re always lumped together in all the books and magazines and by all the “professionals”, probably much to the annoyance of the Trentinians and Adigeans. (I’m not sure if that’s what they’re really called. Probably not. I’m making it up.) The two regions together do make up what seems to be a gateway between the Mediterranean countries and the rest of Europe. In fact, Alto Adige was a part of Austria up until the end of World War I which, technically, wasn’t that long ago. Anyway, to cut the History lesson short, there’s a lot of Austrian influence in the wines from the region. The wines have also been overshadowed by the Friulian wines in the export markets, so there aren’t a lot of them found around here.

Finally, we have the Veneto, the home of some of the most intriguing wines in Italy. There’s the Prosecco, my favorite variety of sparkling wine. There’s Amarone, one of the world’s most unique reds, made with raisinated grapes. There’s the Valpolicella, made in numerous different styles, from a Beaujolais-like style to a concentrated desserty style, with a few stops in-between. And there’s the Soave, which is one of the best white wines in the world, and one of my favorites.

Tomorrow we’ve got three whites, two reds, a rose and a rose sparkling Prosecco. The rose sparkling Prosecco is somewhat of an oddity, and I’m one of very few people in town to get it. I’ve got a few bottles left. I might be able to get a few more, but there’s no guarantee on that. Ooh, and it’s tasty too. Also note there’s an Amarone in there! They’re not cheap, that’s why I’m doing it! Y’know . . . so we can all taste it, at least.

So Friday, August 3rd, between 4:30 and 9:00 PM it’s:

Friuli, Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto!!!
Trevisiol NV Prosecco Rose, Veneto
Dorigo 2006 Ribolla Giala, Friuli
Marco Felluga 2005 Molamatta (Tocai Friuliano, Ribolla Gialla, Pinot Bianco)
Alois Lageder 2006 Lagrein Rose, Alto Adige
Tommao Bussola 2005 Valpolicella, Veneto

Okay . . . Just Veneto Here!!!
Inama 2005 Soave du Lot, Veneto
Corte Giara 2001 Amarone, Veneto

A stellar deal at $10 for the First 5, $6 for the Extra 2 Premium Pours.

Hope to see you here!

Seize the Wine!

Next Friday tasting is Germany and Austria!

M