Tag Archives | current release wines

Thanksgiving wine?

By on November 21, 2009 in Wine Reviews

Seems a cliché because answer is always consistent, like the meal. May be why we eat it so few times each year.

I understand the historical myth surrounding a traditional Thanksgiving meal. And I like the food. What I don’t like is the imperative that everything needs to appear on the dining table at once. That concept alone drives many hostesses more than a little bit around the bend. Why not have five or six courses, each 45-minutes apart? And in San Francisco, where Dungeness crab season starts right about the same time as Thanksgiving, why not make a crab appetizer part of the ceremony. Few things make me as thankful as the start of Dungeness crab season.

Thanksgiving Food-Wine Pairing?

Turkey may be the centerpiece of the meal, but it is not a strong flavor around which to base any wine selections. Stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy. These are the traditional flavors that should dictate the best wines to serve. But let’s see if we even get to that bridge before we discuss how to cross it.
     At several of the places I’ve gone over the years for family Thanksgivings, the issue has often been: “How many people will even drink a glass of wine?” My situation can’t be that unusual. One-third of Americans don’t drink any alcohol at all, and another third of Americans don’t drink wine. So, if I want to take three different bottles of wine to Thanksgiving at my stepmother’s relatives’ house, I’d better be prepared to drink them all by myself. Which may or may not be a problem. Good social choice = Continue Reading →

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Single Vineyard Napa Cabernets

By on October 28, 2009 in Wine Trivia

Think you can pick out a Pauillac from a Margaux blind? It’s hard. Most people who think experts should be able to do it, have never tried to do it. Now perform that feat with wines from Napa Valley!
At least three wineries are making Cabernet Sauvignon wines separately from a variety of Napa Valley vineyards in order to illustrate the concept of terroir. It’s an interesting effort, and success or failure will be replete with commentary on the American marketplace. Heretofore it has been Europeans who firmly believed a wine should express the place where it was grown. Hence the role of the winemaker was akin to that of a baby sitter: keep the wine safe, but otherwise get out of the way and let it develop on its own. By contrast Americans put their faith in the artistry of the winemaker, expecting grapes (usually of the same varietal) to be adroitly blended from several different districts in order to achieve a result better than the sum of its parts. Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay would be one huge success story dating from the 1980’s built on that blending model.
California winemakers love to talk about terroir, and they can demonstrate it in their cellar by letting you taste from different fermentation lots residing in barrel. But, at the end of the day, the sales department at most wineries demands all those lots get blended into one or two final products (usually a high-end assemblage, and then maybe a second-string item) for ease of understanding in the marketplace. Continue Reading →

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