If you're talking Brett as in Brett Favre, then not me - I'm a Steelers fan, baby!
If you're talking Brett as in the yeast Brettanomyces, then that's a different story entirely. Lots of wine folks are scared of that puppy. And with pretty good reason - chances are that if you've ever had red wine, you've run into Brett. And unlike the Steelers rushing, hurrying and sacking the other big, bad Brett, when you run into brettanomyces, it's you that could be the one on the wrong side of that meeting...
The trouble with brett is that it's not all bad (although the jury is still out in the wine world on this one). In small enough amounts, brett creates compounds that potentially add interesting complexity to a wine, with smokey, spicy elements (yum!). Too much brett, and you have reduced fruit aromas, and wine reminiscent of medicine, Band-Aids, and stinky barnyards (yuck!)...
Like a boring dinner guest, brett is notoriously difficult to get rid of. (Crap, did I just end a sentence in a preposition?). It's been found lodged deep into the staves of new oak barrels (one of its favorite hideouts), to the point where no cleaning will ever get it out. And it can basically chill out in a dormant state for long periods of time until it finds food (in the wine) - and it doesn't need much food to get its party started.
What's a winemaker to do?
Well, there are plenty of cleaning techniques that help the situation, and some winemakers will carefully rack and test their wines at each stage of the winemaking process to minimize the impact of brett on their finished wines.
But there is something else that they can do to minimize brett. The trouble is, it goes against conventional marketing wisdom in the chase for high-scoring wines on the hundred-point wine scale!
They can harvest their grapes earlier.
According to a recent article on Sommelier Journal magazine, harvesting grapes earlier reduces the pH levels, which brett doesn't like. Lower pH levels also help to make anti-brett initiatives (like using sulfer dioxide) more effective.
The trouble is, if you harvest earlier, your grapes can't achieve the raisin-like ripeness and high alcohol extremes favored by some point-giving wine critics out there.
Just sayin'.
Reduce Band-Aid action, and increase the amount of lower-alcohol, elegant red wines available in the marketplace? Hmmm... I'm sooooo in on that, baby!
Cheers!
(images: maximumgrilledsteelers.com, vignaioli.it, jackstrawspizza.com)
Who's Afraid of Big Bad Brett?
Bitterness in White Wines (No... Really!)
I run into this situation at a lot of wine tasting events:We're trying white wines, and one of the tasters gets a look on their face as if they just sucked down one of those Altoids lemon sours. The kind that are so bitter, they make you feel as though you will suck out your brains through the insides of your cheeks, and spit them out shorty after you jettison the candy from your mouth at upwards of 200 mph.
"This wine tastes bitter. Why is that?"
This is usually followed by a statement from me that starts with "Astringency..." and ends quickly with "...soooooo, let's move onto our next wine..." in order to prevent me from looking like I've got no idea what I'm talking about.
Explaining bitterness in red wines is fairly simple: red wines contain tannins, and almost every wine drinker knows that tannins (especially in young wines) impart a sometimes bitter, often gum-drying quality. Tannins come primarily from the skin contact that makes red wines, well, red. White wines typically don't undergo too much (if any) contact with grape skins when they're made. Sure, sometimes oak aging can impart tannins in white wines, but usually not enough to make them bitter.
So, what gives?
At a recent wine geek tasting party, my geeky friends and I discussed the very topic. And one of those geeks knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows some people.
Important people. Dangerous people.
Well, not really dangerous, but people who have dangerous levels of wine guru knowledge. Like, for example, Jancis Robinson, one of the premier wine authorities in the known universe.
Now, before I get into Jancis' (and others') answer on the question of what makes some white wines bitter, we need to take a little side trip to the "She Blinded Me With Science" Department. Because when it comes to wines, you can't talk about the nitty-gritty of flavors and bitterness without talking phenols. And you can't talk phenols without talking science....
She Blinded Me With SCIENCE!!!
Just like you and me, wine is made mostly of water. It also has a good portion of alcohol floating around in there (just like me.. but maybe not just like you). The 5% or so left over are the chemicals (well over 900 in some cases) that make wine, well, wine. Because wine is made from grapes, it picks up chemicals from the skins, seeds, and stems of grapes called phenols. Phenols interact with other molecules in the wine, and those interactions help to define the taste, color, and body of a wine. When you taste bitterness and astringency in red wine, it's likely you're tasting phenols. Since the chemical reactions in wine can change over time (for example, when phenols interact with the small amount of oxygen present in the wine bottle), so can a wine's tastes. This, in part, explains why a wine is often said to "mellow out" and become less bitter and softer in mouthfeel over time - thanks, in part to phenols.
Still with me? OK, so how does this tie into bitterness in white wines? What makes some white wines bitter for Pete's sake??...
I've got three answers to that question, from three separate Masters of Wine, all of which are different but technically correct! Let's decode each one:
1) According to Julia Harding, MW: "Aromatic compounds called terpenes, particularly important in aromatic varieties such as Gewürztraminer, Muscat and Riesling (but also in the aromas of flowers), are said to contribute to bitterness. Their concentration is greater in very ripe grapes and the effect is likely to be more marked when grapes have been pressed less gently or after ill-judged skin contact."Translation: If the wine gets a bit too much poorly-timed skin contact (from squishing the juice out too roughly, or from deliberately giving the juice contact with the grapes skins but at the wrong time), you might end up with some bitter white wine - especially if the grapes were very ripe at harvest. Terpenes can also be imparted from oak contact, so too much oak contact could also be the culprit.
2) Pancho Campo, MW's answer:
Translation: The grapes weren't ripe enough when the wine was made. This allowed the introduction of those IBMPs, without the right amount of flavor, etc. to counterbalance the 'greeness'.
3) And from the irrepressible Jancis Robinson herself:
Translation: Too much phenol action, baby. Either from mistake or from the winemaker gettin' a little too greedy, someone was trying to extract the maximum amount of flavor from their grapes - but they went overboard. Whoops - hello Mr. Bitter!
There you go - now, off to impress the guests at your next wine party with your wine chemistry smarties...
For more wine chemistry geek knowledge, I recommend the Oxford Companion to Wine.
Cheers!
(images: time-inc.net, wikimedia.org)
The Trouble With Wine Ratings (an Introduction to the 89 Project)
Excellence.
You deserve it. You demand it.
It haunts you. It drives you.
It's so Powerful. It makes you. Speak. In Broken. Sentences.
We're obsessed with comparing things when we make purchases, especially in the U.S. Some of us are always out there looking for the best. Even in today's excellence-obsessed status-quo-chasing society, no one can blame you for just honestly wanting to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to buying wine. Especially when the economy is in the financial out house.
This is where you'd think that wine ratings would help you. By rating a wine on a 100 point scale, you can make a quick shopping determination so that you can pick up the best bottle for the money, and feel confident that you got a good deal and will enjoy your purchase without having to learn any of that fancy wine mumbo-jumbo, right?
Not quite.
If I was grading the 100 point wine rating scale (hell, why not, we love to rate stuff, remember?), I'd give it a C-. That's because the 100 point scale has 3 major flaws that prevent it from really telling you what you think it should tell you...
Flaw #1: It's actually a 50-point scale.
Yes, just like those exams you took in grade school, no one actually gets less than a 50. A wine gets a 50 just for showing up and writing its name (on the label). This would lead you to believe that, like those old grade school exams, the 100 point scale grades wines objectively. Which leads us to...
Flaw #2: It gives a false sense of Objectivity.
No one can really score a wine 100% objectively. This is because we all have differences in our palates, and therefore (at least) subtle differences in how we interpret a wine's flavor and quality. If a particular critic gives a wine a very high score, it says nothing about whether or not you might like that wine. So, unless your palate and preferences are similar to that critic, if you blindly buy one wine over another just because it scored a few points higher, you may be passing up a great wine that you would enjoy even more than that flashy 'high-scorer'.
Flaw #3: It implies a "Scale" of Excellence.
Like that old grade school grading method, you'd expect a wine scoring in the 90s to be better than a wine scoring in the 70s (an 'A' vs a 'C') - and for the most part, you'd be right. But is a wine that scores a 95 "better" than a wine that scores a 91? This is much trickier territory. A difference of a few points does not guarantee that one wine is better than another, any more than my scoring a 95 and you scoring a 91 on a wine exam guarantees that I'd be a better sommelier than you.
The trouble is that too many people fall into the trap of following the numbers for their buying decisions - so much so that a wine rated a 90+ will sell for a much higher price than a wine that scored an 89.
In order to help break out of some of the rut caused by this scoring system, a group of wine bloggers has started up a new blog called The 89 Project. The aim of the 89 Project is to highlight the wines that people are missing out on because of the 100 point system. I've signed on as a contributor, so watch that space for an update from me (once I get my dirty little hands on some tasty "89s").
In the explanation of his 100 point rating scale, Robert Parker sounds his own word of caution about blindly following his (or anyone else's) scores:"No scoring system is perfect, but a system that provides for flexibility in scores, if applied by the same taster without prejudice, can quantify different levels of wine quality and provide the reader with one professional's judgment. However, there can never be any substitute for your own palate nor any better education than tasting the wine yourself."
Well said. Don't say we didn't warn ya!
Cheers!
(images: wales.nhs.uk, modmyprofile.com)
Wine Dis-Service
I recently received an e-mail response from a 1WineDude.com subscriber, in reaction to the previous post Does Wine Taste Better When You're Dining Out? This response got me thinking about restaurant wine service in general, and it struck a cord in me because it touches on one of my pet peeves about wine service in many restaurants:
"...one thing I can control at home is proper rinsing and drying of my stemware. Nothing gets my goat more than shelling out good money for a favorite wine only to find that the restaurant’s stemware still smells of soap or rinsing/sheeting agents. If you encounter this problem when out on the town, don’t feel embarrassed to ask the server to have the glasses rinsed and hand dried again when having a special wine."
Sound advice indeed, and I couldn't agree more with it. For most wines, having a tulip-shaped glass is about all you need to get the maximum enjoyment out of the wine. Picking the right kind of stemware when drinking a special wine can really enhance the aromas and flavors. But I'd rather have a clean glass of any shape vs. a perfectly-matched but smelly glass!
Generally speaking, a little bit of wine knowledge can go a long way in making customers happy. Another pet peeve of mine when it comes to wine service: "the over-pour." Filling a wine glass to the brim makes it almost impossible to enjoy all the aromas of a wine. It's like eating a steak with a napkin draped over it. And just try to swirl the wine without spilling it...
Since we're into complaining mode here, I'll offer another one: serving wine at the wrong temperature. I'm not too precious about this - I just want it close. I'd rather have it too cold, because I easily enough warm the glass up in my hands (unless it's been overpoured!). But getting a really, really cold red or a hot white is a total dining experience buzzkill for me.
Those are my wine service pet peeves. How about yours?
Cheers!
(images: stuff.co.nz, ggpht.com/vincent.vanwylick)
A Wine Introduction (and Some 1WineDude.com Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes)
Changes are afoot here at 1WineDude.com.
By the way, I recently learned that the first recorded use of "afoot" was in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" - which is way cool. I'm a nerd, I know.
Anyway, I'm making some slight changes in the footprint (ha-ha) of the blog posts. Basically, they will start to get shorter - easier for you to read, harder for me to write. And, I'm hoping that they will also start to become more frequent. I've got a newborn in the house, bear with me...
Today, I thought I'd offer you a small contribution I made a few years back to the world of wine knowledge. When I started this whole wine consulting thing, I was frequently asked to provide wine overviews - so I put together a handy presentation that gives an overview of what wine is all about - from the dawn of wine in history, all the way to why you taste those fruits in your glass:
You should be able to view the original presentation file in most versions of PowerPoint, or with the (free!) Impress tool from OpenOffice.org. Handiest of all, you can access it online in Flash (Ahhhh-ahhhh!) format here.
I think some of you fine folks out there may find it useful. Enjoy!
Cheers!
(images: handpicked.co.uk)
3 Things Your Dog Can Teach You About Wine Appreciation
I'm a dog guy.
While I don't hate cats, I don't love cats, either. Mostly, I get along best with the cats that think they're dogs anyway. Since this post is going to be about my schooling of wine appreciation literally going to the dogs, my apologies in advance to those who are cat lovers. I've never been taught anything about wine appreciation from a cat (more on learning wine stuff from domesticated house pets in a minute) - though they have taught me the art of totally ignoring people.
Since Mrs. Dudette has most of the newborn baby dudette feeding responsibilities, Dude here has been given primary Dog Duty at the House of Dude. I'm the one who now has to feed and walk my wife's Weimaraner, Samson (see pic above). (Actually, to be fair, after 7+ years together old Sammy is just as much my dog now as he is hers).
Sammy has been a great sport throughout the whole adjusting-to-the-baby thing, and he is very, very sweet with the baby. Having to walk the dog more often than I used to has made me take more notice of Sam's behaviors - such as licking the baby, sniffing around, licking himself, sniffing the baby, licking himself, and licking himself (did I mention licking himself?).
By observing Sam, I've actually learned a bit about wine appreciation. And no, it doesn't involve drinking so much that you want to sniff someone's butt, unless that's your thing (licking yourself is also optional). Though it does apparently involve startling segues from dog licking to wine tasting... maybe I should have thought about that one a bit more...
Anyway, straight from the home office in suburban eastern-PA, here are 3 Things that Your Dog Can Teach You About Wine Appreciation...
Short, concentrated sniffs work best. Dogs have some of the best senses of smell around - and Weimaraners have one of the best noses in the doggie business. When my dog smells something, he doesn't take a long, drawn-out, overly-dramatic sniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiffffff. He takes a burst of short, concentrated sniffs. Sniff... sniff-sniff... sniff-sniff-sniff-sniiiiiifff.
Turns out there is a lot of merit in that approach if you really want to smell something thoroughly - and in the case of wine, smelling is where you will get about 80% of your enjoyment and appreciation. Shorter sniffs help to focus your olfactory senses, and may also help to keep your sense of smell from fatiguing too quickly. The sharper your sense of smell, the more you can pinpoint what aspects you like (or don't like) about the wine that your tasting.In the case of wine, smelling is where you will get about 80% of your enjoyment and appreciation for your glass of vino.
When a dog is really smelling something, nothing can break his concentration. At that point, there is no walk, there is no leash, there is no master - there is only the smell. If you want to experience everything that a wine has to offer, you'd do well to imitate the concentration that the average dog gives to any random oder in which s/he gets interested. With that kind of focus, you'd be on your way to wine-tasting pro status in no time.
Don't rush it. Once my dog stops smelling something and decides to start eating it, he is an shining example of what not to do when enjoying a wine (or any food or drink, for that matter). My dog will inhale food that he really likes. He will eat it so quickly, you would think there was a pack of angry, hungry velociraptors waiting 7 inches away from him ready to steal his morsels should he take more than 14 nanoseconds to eat them. The tastier the treat, the less he chews (or breathes) before swallowing.
Which is exactly what you don't want to do when enjoying a wine. Take your time. Savor it. That glass isn't going anywhere, man. Relaaaax. See, isn't that nice? Sniff. Swirl. Focus. And enjoy.
Now, go walk that dog!
Cheers!
(images: 1WineDude.com, nytimes.com, galacticpudding, javelinaleapwinery.com)
The Trouble with Vintages (When You Should Care - and When You Shouldn't)
Vintages. Can't live with `em... pass the beer nuts!
The question of whether or not wine vintages (the year printed on the label, which is almost always the year when the wine's grapes were harvested) matter is one that often perplexes the budding wine enthusiast.
The questions that the Dude here regularly fields regarding wine vintages generally come in this variety:
Is it a "born on" date? Or an indicator of quality? Or a deciding factor in how long (or if) a wine can be aged?
The answer is "Yes."
Sort of.
In this post, I'm going to try to clear up some of this vintage mess for ya. Mostly because I genuinely want to help. And, to be totally honest, because I get asked about wine vintages a lot, so I want to have a place to send people for more info. (read: I am lazy and don't feel like answering the question anymore... hey, so sue me, I've got a newborn in the house!)....
Here's the honest truth (well, the truth according to the 1WineDude, that is) about wine vintages: For the most part, the wine vintages printed on the label don't matter all that much.
The reason that wine vintages (mostly) don't matter is two-fold:
So when does a vintage really matter?
99% of wine sold today is not meant to be aged. Most of the wine that you encounter is meant to be enjoyed within 6 to 18 months of the vintage. In this sense, the vintage year functions more like a "born on" date - if someone is trying to sell you a really inexpensive older vintage wine, it's probably because they want to pawn off their remaining stock of that vino that's won't otherwise sell because it's past its prime.
Does this mean that the wine will magically turn into vinegar at the stroke of midnight 18 months after the vintage date, Cinderella-style? No - but thanks to the miracle of chemistry, there's a good chance that the fruit characteristics of the wine will start to dissipate after that time. For the majority of everyday drinking wine that you might buy, you can set a mental note to enjoy it before its second harvest birthday. That way, you will get a chance to sample those tasty fruit flavors before they disappear.For the most part, the wine vintages printed on the label don't matter all that much.
While this is still true today to some extent, the stability of most of the world's major winemaking areas, coupled with ultra-modern winemaking techniques and technologies means that consistent producers can churn out decent everyday drinking wine even in poor harvest years. In my experience, this has even been true for some fine wine in "bad" vintage years from regions with consistent weather (like California - Opus One's 1998 blend is a good example of this).
Vintages do matter when you're splurging on a fine wine purchase from a region that has a variable climate year to year.
The most famous example of this being red Burgundy, the fickle Pinot Noir areas of France that can produce wine tasting like sublime berry seduction one year, and rotten cabbage the next. If you're going to shell out the coin for something special (either for drinking now or laying down for a special occasion later), it can't hurt to do a little vintage homework. I recommend using the mobile vintage chart from BBR.com, which you can reference right from your web-enabled cell phone while at your local wine shop. This can help you to gauge the relative quality of a vintage for a fine wine purchase.
BUT... don't steer clear of a vintage entirely just because it's been deemed of lesser quality than a previous year. Why? You can miss some amazing bargains that way - these vintages are like a lower stock value; it's time to buy. In an "off-year" you might have access to quality wines that might normally be out of your comfortable price range, and it's a chance for you to explore the winemaking styles of great producers without totally breaking the bank.Vintages do matter when you're splurging on a fine wine purchase from a region that has a variable climate year to year. The most famous example of this being red Burgundy, the fickle Pinot Noir from France that can taste like sublime berry seduction one year, and rotten cabbage the next.
The majority of my fine wine purchases have been in "bad" vintages - I scoop that up like a day-trading stock hunter! The bottom line is that a passionate producer with talented staff and a history of great winemaking will still make impressive wine in an off year. They may not be wines of sublime perfection, but they sure as hell won't be bad, and they have the potential to totally knock your socks off.
Cheers!
(images: globalbeautes.com [modified by the 1WineDude], art.com, weimax.com)
5 Common Wine Drinking Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)
Whoops.
Everyone makes mistakes. In the case of the Dude here, mistake frequency is pretty much daily. Thankfully, almost every mistake is an opportunity to learn.
Fortunately for you, the Dude here has made plenty of mistakes when it comes to drinking and appreciating wine. That means that you don't have to make all of those same mistakes, my friend! You can thank me later (preferably with a bottle or two of `82 Mouton...).
Anyway - following are Top 5 of the most common mistakes in wine drinking and wine appreciation that I've come across (or made myself) during my life dabbling in the wine biz. Hopefully these help you to avoid the same...
Filling that glass to the brim is being generous only in the extra amount of calories that you're consuming. It's a killer for wine enjoyment because a) it prevents the wine's aromas from being concentrated towards your nose (where they belong), b) it prevents you from swirling the wine in your glass (which releases those wonderful aromas and flavors in the first place) and c) it makes you much more likely to spill your wine (and you probably paid good money for it!).
At this point you're probably thinking, "Wait a second Dude - waiters do the Over-pour all the time in restaurants. What am I supposed to do about that?" Simple: ask for a second (empty) wine glass. Now you have two glasses of wine that you can fill properly (which basically means filling to the bowl shape of the glass and not beyond). You're welcome!"Filling that glass to the brim is being generous only in the extra amount of calories that you're consuming."
In a word - Yuck.
Now, you don't need to be too anal about this one, but to get the most out of your wine, you do need to get the wine temperature in the right ballpark - and the right ballpark is different depending on they type of wine you're trying to enjoy. Sweet whites and sparklers usually stand up to the coldest temperatures; hefty reds like Zinfandel and Port can withstand the highest temps. For more specific information, check out this handy chart of wine serving temps from recipetips.com.
If you already know the wine and think it's a good buy, then you may have found a good deal in that end-bin. While it's certainly possible to catch a great bargain, I've also seen on many, many occasions wines that are woefully past their prime stuck into the end-bin at steep "discounts". Don't totally ignore those end-bins - but it's a big mistake to make those the only stops on your foray through the wine store."...the end bins are sometimes where good wines go to die..."
A thick, flavorful sauce can turn a lighter dish into a heavy monster of a meal. So, if you're pairing a lighter wine with that heavier sauce, you might not ever get to really taste that wine, as it will get totally overpowered. Epicureans take note!
Not doing any homework. You by no means need to have fancy-schmansy wine certifications to appreciate wine. But a little knowledge about wine styles and wines from different areas of the world can arm you with a very important weapon when it comes to wine enjoyment: Context.
What do I mean by context? I mean knowing what some of those wines typically taste like, and what foods are typically enjoyed with them. This allows you to avoid a whole heap of mistakes when it comes to wine appreciation, because it means you're more likely to taste the wine in its proper context. Someone can tell you that they hate Italian wines - and if that person tried those wines with super-spicy Thai food instead of Italian cuisine, they're probably not giving that poor Italian wine a fighting chance to be liked!
Grab yourself a book and get in some wine learning. Take a wine class, practice your tasting, or host a wine tasting party. The important thing is to keep an open mind about wine, and be willing to learn - in terms of helping you avoid the most common wine drinking foibles, those two things will never let you down.
Cheers!
(images: chichesterdesign.co.uk, comparestoreprices.co.uk, oleswanson.com)
10 Free Wine Web Resources You Probably Aren't Using
We're all short on cash in these times of recess -er, I mean, economic challenge. So the Dude has compiled a list of his 10 favorite wine resources on the web. All of them FREE. Each one will cost you exactly $0.00 to use. Bumpkis. Nada. Goose-eggs.
You can thank me later, by clicking the "Make a Donation" button on the Left and sending me some cash. Oh... uhm... wait a second... never mind...
Anyway, chances are that even if you're an experienced wine geek, you probably are not using some of these gems. I've found them to be extremely useful, or helpful in a pinch, and in some cases downright indispensable. Hopefully you'll find them valuable as well (look at it this way - you're almost guaranteed to at least get what you paid for `em!)...
Wine & Health: Wondering if putting back those wines is putting years on your life ahead of your time? Wonder no more - the Professional Friends of Wine have compiled a wealth of wine health information in their Wine Health 101 Section.
Cheers!
(images: freefoto.com, ox.ac.uk, thelanguagemenu.com)
El Vino Cheapo, Parte Dos
(image: kyledesigns.wordpress.com)
Last week, I posted an article with my Top 10 Budget Wine picks. In the dreamy, sleep-deprived bliss of fatherhood, I totally missed the opportunity to invite you to submit YOUR favorite low-cost wines.
Blame it on the magic of having a new baby in the house - the kind of special magic that wakes you at 3AM and keeps you up until 6AM soothing a small, crying human being and saying things like "Aaaaaawwwwwwww.... What's the matter sweet lil' munchkin?"
Anyway, let's make up for this gross oversight!
Got a great "budget wine" recommendation? Shout it out in the Comments!
The criteria:
1) You have to think the wine is good
2) The wine needs to be widely accessible
3) The wine needs to be cheap (ideally under $15 USD, but certainly not more than $20 tops).
In other news: My stint in "new baby-land" continues, and so far I am really digging being a dad. To help me out and give me some extra diaper-changing time, there will be more interesting guest posts for you next week. Stay tuned...
Cheers!
Meditation By The Glass: The Mindfulness of Wine Appreciation
(images: all from Joe's house!)
Although I was raised in the shadow of Roman Catholicism, I am not by any stretch of the imagination a religious man.
In fact, after attending an Oblate grade school, a Franciscan high school, and a Jesuit university for undergrad, I ended up totally religiously-confused. Not exactly a poster-child for American religious education.
Still, despite being (more-or-less) totally religious-averse, I would consider myself a spiritual person. Over the last few years, my wife has introduced me to Zen and Buddhist principles that we have tried to integrate into our lives, with some great results. I don't claim to understand any of the universe's mysteries, but there is no denying (for me, at least) the powerful & moving experiences of communion I've felt when meditating."This small word - witnessing - contains the whole of spirituality." - Osho
And by "meditating" I don't just mean the familiar image we have of someone sitting on a pillow silently exploring the depths of their witnessing (though doing that is great and I'd highly recommend it to anyone). I mean going about your daily life activities and truly witnessing each moment of your life - trying to be "in the zone" and really living, treating every action you take as sacred - whether you are washing the dishes, walking the dog, negotiating an important business deal, playing music...
...Or tasting wine.
It's by truly being meditative when tasting that we can most maximize both our enjoyment of wine and our wine appreciation skills...
I've written a few "glasses of zen" articles in the past, but I've never really explored how the simple act of witnessing can enhance the enjoyment of wine.
Some of the greatest noses in the wine business follow a similar "witnessing" tasting method, though they themselves may not call it meditation.
Take the love-him-or-leave-him wine critic Robert Parker, for example:"When I put my nose in a glass, it's like tunnel vision. I move into another world, where every bit of mental energy is focused on that wine." - Robert M. Parker, Jr.
A similar tasting ethos has been expressed (quite eloquently) by the venerable Christie's wine critic Michael Broadbent:"You do not need to be an expert, or even that interested in wine to enjoy drinking it. But tasting is not the same as drinking... The important point is that there is a reason for every colour, smell and taste. Every facet of a wine's effect on our senses... is meaningful. Exploring and understanding these facets helps us to appreciate a wine more fully." - from Winetasting, by Michael Broadbent
Those are some serious big-league wine-tasters, whose opinions have been known to make-or-break sales for virtually any wine that they happen to taste. So, you don't just need to take Dude's word for it!
I could wax philosophical on how the quality of our focus may or may not increase the quality of our wine appreciation. But I'll leave that one to the book Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine which has already explored it in great detail.
Instead, I will simply leave you with another quote, and then request that you do just one simple thing. Here's the quote:"Meditation is not something that we just do for 20 or 40 minutes every morning and then forget about. Meditation involves a principle of awareness that you can practice in every moment of your life." - Wildmind.org
Here's the simple request:
The next time that try a glass of wine, really taste it, don't just drink it. Don't think, just taste.
If you find yourself marveling at how all the disparate aspects of nature have come together to allow you this moment of real, focused living - connecting you to the small miracle of how the fruit of a wild plant can end up producing the complex and pleasure-giving drink in the glass in front of you - well, my friend, then you "get it."
Nothing left to do but sit back, relax, and offer up a small prayer of gratitude to the universe for the gift you have received.
Well, that and finish your glass, of course.
Cheers!
1WineDude's Top 10 Budget Wine Picks
(images: piperreport.com, amazon.com, storeappeal.com)
It is with much trepidation that I publish this post.
Not that I don't enjoy giving wine advice. I love it, acutally.
I especially love when people tell me that they truly enjoyed a wine that I recommended to them. When I hear that those wines opened people up to new culinary and epicurean levels of enjoyment, I am one very happy wine dude.
It's just that I prefer to give this advice one-on-one, and tailor it to an individual's or business' specific needs. Once I publish this sort of stuff in one way or another, I invariably get flamed from people who feel that I snuffed/ignored/disrespected their favorite budget wine pick.
BUT... you folks keep asking me for it, so I'm gonna bite the bullet and go ahead and give you -
To make the cut, the wine needs to a) have a decent enough amount of production / distribution that most people won't have a difficult time finding it, b) offer a consistent level of quality bang-for-the-buck, & c) cost less than $20 USD. The wines are offered in no particular order. Where I have previously reviewed the wine on twitter, I've included a link to the 'mini-review.'Whites
- Smoking Loon Viognier (CA) - Good varietal character, a nice into. to a Chardonnay alternative if you're willing to branch out.
- Hess Chardonnay (CA) - Not too oaky & well put-together.
- Chateau Ste. Michele Gewürztraminer (WA) - Consistently yummy. Mini-review
- Salmon Run Riesling (NY) - Contains some of the best aspects of this underrated varietal, at a low price.
- Quinta da Aveleda Vinho Verde Branco (Portugal) - Improbably cheap, with nice spritz and refreshing fruit. Mini-review
Reds
- Banfi Centine (Italy) - "Super Tuscan" type blend for the rest of us. Mini-review
- Ravenswood Old Vine Lodi Zinfandel (CA) - Dark and jammed with fruit. Mini-review
- Firesteed Pinot Noir (OR) - An elegant introduction to OR Pinot.
- Misterio Malbec (Argentina) - Black as tar and tasty. Mini-review
- Francis Coppola Diamond Claret (CA) - Accessible Bordeaux-style blend at a fair price. Mini-review
The more astute readers out there will already have noted that the vasy majority of these wines are made in the USA. To be honest, the list would more accurately be titled "DUDE'S TOP 10 BUDGET WINE PICKS IF YOU LIVE IN THE U.S." There are only 3 non-USA producers in my list, representing (in order of appearance) Portugal, Italy, & Argentina.The reason for this is twofold:
1) I live in the U.S., so I'm giving you what are good budget picks available to me, and
2) Aussie, NZ, German, French, and Spanish wines are not currently offering particularly good value for money in the U.S. (my opinion). The ones that do are notoriously difficult to locate (which usually ends up driving up their prices eventually anyway).
I'd like to think that this could be a bit of a wake-up call to budget importers and producers from those countries who want to succeed in the huge U.S. wine consumer market... but my Google Analytics reports suggest that I don't yet have that kind of influence on the world's wine blogging readership :-).
Cheers!
3 Things an Infant Can Teach You About Drinking Wine
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In a mere 2 1/2 weeks, my infant daughter has taught me a lot about life - how fragile, strong, miraculous, and "gritty" it can be, sometimes all at once.
What I didn't expect is that she would also teach me something about wine appreciation.
Now, before you go running for the phone to report me for child abuse, I'm not feeding this kid any vino. The most she gets of that would come from the residual bits in Mrs. Dudette's breast milk.
What I'm talking about is watching her eat (er, is it "drink" right now?). It's actually made me reflect a bit on how we (as adults) normally eat and drink in our crazy, not-enough-minutes-in-the-day kind of world.
And I can sum it up in three little words...
SLOW DOWN, BABY.
Actually, you can even shorten it down to two words (SLOW DOWN), for those of you who are really, really busy.
My daughter (more or less) waits until she is pretty hungry, makes her "hungry face" (which consists of her sticking out her tongue and flailing her head around looking for a waiting nipple), then latches on and starts sucking and gulping like a crazed, wild animal. She does stop to breathe - but only when she has to. Or when we burp her (those burps would finish her in the top 5 in any beer-guzzling bar burping contests, by the way).
And you know what? Daddy isn't much better.
I eat 4 to 5 meals a day, trying to load the calories up in the AM and gradually lighten my food intake so that dinner is usually a small-ish meal. When I eat lunch, I'm usually in the middle of something else. Instead of being "in the moment" and enjoying the food, I gulp i down as if it were the only meal I would receive that week and someone will come to snatch it away from me
if I'm not finished "eating" it in 5 minutes or less.
Watching my lil' bundle of joy has made me realize that this is probably not the most mature way to ensure I'm getting the right amount of conscious enjoyment - not to mention nutritional value - out of my meals.
If I used the same approach to appreciating wine, I wouldn't even taste it, let alone be able to evaluate its aromas, or enjoy any lingering finish that a great wine has to offer!
Let's get to the nitty-gritty and summarize.
On the winding road of life, watching how an infant eats can show us what (not) to do to really appreciate our wine (and our food):
1) Slow Down (Baby)
Take your time. There is no reason to rush that glass down your throat. Look at the wine. Smell the wine. Check out the colors of the wine in your glass. Swirl it and smell it again. Get to know the wine a little bit - after all, you're going to be putting it into your body, if nothing else you should make sure it's something that you really want in there!
2) Be In The Moment
Think about the wine and its aromas and flavors. Don't think about all the things you need to get done tomorrow, whether or not you think the restaurant's veggies will be overly-buttered, if the baby-sitter is eying up your beer (OK, maybe you should worry about that last one), etc.
3) Don't Forget To Pause - and Breathe
Once a glass of wine is poured, wine needs air to really show its stuff. And you need air, too. To clear your mind, help you focus, and remind you to pause and actually live and enjoy each moment of life. And each glass in your hand.
Cheers!
5 Reasons Why Smoking Kills Wine Appreciation
(images: wiskirchengallery.com, farm3.static.flickr.com, smokingkills.com)
Guess what?
Smoking sucks donkey butt.
Hardly a news flash, right?
But what you might not know already is that, aside from the fact that smoking kills more people per year than alcohol & drug abuse, homicides, suicides, car accidents, fires, and AIDS-related deaths - combined - it also kills something else near and dear to our hearts.
Smoking totally kills your ability to truly appreciate wine.
You want to learn to appreciate wine like a pro? Then you'd better quit smoking, pronto...
1) Smoking impairs your sense of smell.
This is a well-known effect of smoking. Considering that almost all of your ability to taste wine stems from your ability to smell, this makes smoking pretty much the death knell of your wine appreciation pursuits. And it will stay that way until you quit smoking.
2) Smoking impairs your sense of taste.
According to TheScoopOnSmoking.org, "If you smoke, you won't be able to taste your food as well as nonsmokers do." That's because smoking damages your taste buds. So, what smoking doesn't kill in terms of your ability to appreciate a wine's aromas, it will kill in your ability to savor its flavors on your palate. You might as well be drinking water (or grain alcohol) instead.
3) Smoking creates off-odors that interfere with your (and others) ability to appreciate wine in the glass.
When you smoke, you stink. Your clothes, hair, and breath all suffer from off-odors when you're a smoker. The kind of strong off-putting odors associated with smoking are absolute murder for the appreciation of wines with delicate aromas. What's more, nothing will piss off other wine geeks more than your smelliness impairing their ability to appreciate the wine in their glasses!
4) Smoking is boku expensive.
The money that you spend on smoking (current estimates put this around $200 per month, on average) is money that you can't spend on good wine. I don't know about you, but I consider $2000+ a year a good deal of money; after all, that's almost 225 bottles of tasty Centine (or maybe 1.5 bottles of Chateau Petrus - in an off-vintage). Aside from the large personal expense of the smoking habit, it could also be argued that you have a civic and moral duty to quit smoking, to promote the public good. Why? Smoking increases general medical expenses, even for non-smokers. For example, treatment costs and rising insurance rates (even for non-smokers) are being driven up due to smoking-related health costs. Not really related to wine, I know, but since I had your attention I couldn't resist mentioning it.
5) Smoking will kill you.
While there has been past publicity given to medical studies that claim wine drinking can counter some of the arterial damage caused by smoking, there is no evidence to suggest that drinking wine can help counter any of the dozens of other negative health impacts of smoking. The bottom line is that smoking will kill you.
And I'm fairly certain that death seriously imparis your ability to appreciate fine wine.
Duh...
Cheers!
Fresh Takes on Organic Wine
(images: wpsignsystems.com, organic.lovetoknow.com)
Those of you who have been following the Dude's blog know that when it comes to organic wines I have been, let's just say, less than kind in the past on the quality and viability of these products.
To provide yet another perspective in my ongoing love/hate affair with all things organic. my partner in crime Jason Whiteside has offered up some comments on the organic trends impact for wine consumers.
Jason fully acknowledges the marketplace trends towards organic products, even though he is not influenced by it himself per se (according to Jason, "I am not a vegan. Whatever the opposite eating style to vegan is, that is what I am.").
Organic-minded consumers should be aware of the hidden dangers in their wine bottles. According to Jason:
"Along with the wave of social food consciousness, it is natural to wonder about the wine we drink. Is it organic? Is wine OK for vegans to drink? What do we really know about the contents of any given bottle? Consumers who are sensitive to the use of animal products should know why and how animal products are used in the manufacture of wine. Eggs whites, isinglass (the powdered swim bladders of fish), and other proteins are used in the fining process, which helps make a wine clear."
"Often times, when wine is made, it has a hazy or cloudy appearance from suspended particles. Nobody wants to drink hazy wines, for most of us are rightfully programmed to believe a good wine should be clear and bright. So the winemaker will use a carefully measured amount of protein to help remove the haze. This works because the protein carries an electrostatic charge opposite to the particles in the haze. They cling to each other, and fall out of the wine as sediment. The clear wine is then racked off the sediment, which means that for practical purposes there is no clarifying agent (egg whites) left in the bottle."
For those who are over-the-top-serious about their organic shopping, even these fining procedures may not be enough:...
"But, who really knows if there is absolutely none left? Testing for that would be more expensive than it is worth."
All is not entirely hopeless for these consumers, however: "As a consumer, it is relatively easy to find a list of wines that are either unfined or fined without animal products. This website lists vegan wine, and I have found it to be very helpful: http://vegans.frommars.org/wine. I recommend the wines from Rosenblum (especially their Petit Syrah) and Houghton Chardonnay, in particular."
As for the current state of organic winemaking, Jason leans towards my assessment that good examples of these wines are harder to come by (but well worth the effort once you do finally get your hands on them):
"For consumers who look for organic or vegan wines, my hope is that more skilled winemakers take up the challenge of green winemaking. It is not an easy undertaking. Sulfur dioxide buys a winemaker a lot of time by keeping the grapes fresh, and fresh grapes mean better wine. If you want to see how fast harvested fruit starts to spoil in your own home, cut an apple in half, and see how long it takes to start to turn brown. The 'browning' is the effect oxygen has on fruit; sulfur dioxide protects against this. It will be difficult for winemakers to forever put away their chemicals, eggs, and fish bladders, and I for one would not ask them to. But, for those to whom this matters, know that quality wines are being made without the extra stuff. You just have to go out and find them."
Cheers!
How To Navigate Wine on the Web (3 ways to Keep Up With Wine Online & Still Stay Sane)
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In a recent post on her blog, the venerable Dr. Debs wrote about a recent survey commissioned by Constellation Wine Brands (a big, big conglomerate that own dozens of wineries, including Mondavi). The study concluded that more and more wine consumers are overly confused when it comes to what wine they should buy - enough so that Constellation cited increasing consumption by "Overwhelmed" wine consumers as their (Constellation's, that is!) biggest opportunity.
This finding isn't surprising. There are over 7,000 wine brands available to consumers in the U.S. That's a sh*t-load of wine choices, and even the most over-educated wine geeks among us can get overwhelmed (especially if we're trying to understand German wine labels). In fact, it's one of the main reasons that I got "seriously" into wine in the first place - I sat the WSET Intermediate Certificate exam so I'd be better able to buy wine at my local store!
Dr. Debs (quite rightly) points out that there's already an easily-accessible vehicle to help the Overwhelmed wine consumers out there:
So is there a way to help the Overwhelmed, send them armed and ready into Wine Warehouse to face the Sauvignon Blanc aisle, and point them in the direction of wine enthusiasm rather than wine frustration? Yes. It's called the Internet...
It's likely that companies like Constellation have uber-smart Marketing-types, but it's unlikely that those Marketing-types are going to help clear up anything for us Overwhelmed wine consumers unless it has the added benefit of further lining their pockets with more of the shiny gold stuff. Sure, you can use points to help make buying decisions, but who the heck talks in points about, well, anything (other than cholesterol numbers, I mean)?
(Imagine this conversation: "Hey - did you see Rothlisberger pass all over the Bengals last night? He totally deserves a 111.4 QB passer rating." "No way, man - he's not a tenth of a point over 99.7. Puh-leeeeeze!" Not gonna happen. Plus, people can't speak in hyperlinks - though that would be cool....).
While it's true that the Internet is an amazing resource for Overwhelmed wine consumers, it can itself be a bit, well, daunting. I don't know about you, but I liken whittling through the vast array of info. on the Internet to find anything useful to trying to reach into a narrow rats' nest to pick up a nugget of gold.And sometimes the rats' next is full of hungry, nasty rodents. With razor-sharp teeth. And surly dispositions.
It doesn't help that by taking one or two days off from your on-line life, it feels more like an eternity when you return only to find that you've missed 375 twitter updates, 900 blog posts, 250 news stories, 30 "friend requests" and god-knows-how-many e-mail messages. And I'm an IT geek - I can only imagine how the "Internet? Is that the one with the e-mail?" crowd feels.
How can you make sense of it all? My advice is to follow the same Zen-centric approach to handling wine info. on the Internet as you would handle any stream of information overload. Here are three tips that have served me (and my sanity) well in my on-line wine life...
1) Minimize & de-clutter your blog Inbox.
Humans are just not set up to suck in multiple streams of information and retain it all. We're more built for trying to quickly decide whether or not something is gonna eat us and deciding when we should run like hell, etc. There are oodles of articles on-line that offer great advice on how to approach absorbing information (see this great post at Lifehack.org for an example). But the first trick is to limit the information coming at you.To do this, you need to get a bit ruthless about the wine blogs and the wine websites that you follow. This won't be easy - there are quite a bit of good ones out there. You need to find the ones that work best for you, and follow those. This doesn't mean that you can't read a great post on a blog that you don't normally follow - it just means that you need to set a cap on the amount of websites that you do follow on a regular basis, and be very selective about the ones that make the cut to get a piece of your increasingly-precious time.
This of course can help you for any topics that you follow on-line (not just wine). For other tips on time and information management, I recommend getting the ZenHabits.net eBook.
2) Bring the Mountain to Mohammad.Once you've got a firm cap on the number of wine blogs and websites that you follow, then you can stop following them!
What I mean is, get yourself a good RSS reader, and make those updates come to you. I'm a total Netvibes convert. IT geekiness aside, Netvibes allows you to customize and gadgetize the hell out of your on-line life. I'm not sure if I could get by without it at this point (click on the inset pic for a screenshot example of my Netvibes home page). I log in, and can quickly check for interesting blog posts in my day job / music / wine "lives" - minimizing the time I have to spend looking for that information, because it comes to me.
If your tastes are a bit more Spartan, at the other end of the spectrum is the pared-down-to-basics Google Reader. Just be careful, as it's also easy to go overboard with these RSS tools (for an example of this itself can get overwhelming, check out friendfeed.com). Stick to the program!
3) Trust yourself.
This piece of advice is the most wine-specific. Nothing that anyone writes on-line should influence your own personal preferences and tastes. Your experience trumps all. Trust it, and trust yourself.If anything, we in the wine blogging community should be educating you, entertaining you, and (most importantly) opening your mind to wine possibilities that you may not have otherwise known about. We should not be trying to convince you that what you like isn't "correct" or "proper."
(Warning: Shameless plug): For more about learning how to determine what you do (and don't) like in the wine that you drink, check out my eBook.
Cheers (and happy surfing)!
