And what is the prompt for the post due by next Wednesday April 15, you ask? Fine Kosher wine, just in time for Passover! Fortunately for me, I love a quick drive down the 101 highway to Herzog, purveyors of fine kosher wine. Now all I need to do is find some folks who want to head over there and taste with me. If we go tomorrow, Weds. April 8, we can also go to Green Drinks in nearby Camarillo. And if we don’t go tomorrow, we won’t go at all because Herzog Wine Cellars will be closed April 9-17in observance of Passover. The winery will reopen on Sunday, April 19th.
According to the official prompt from WBW #56 host The Cork Dork, this month’s theme of Fine Kosher Wine was inspired by an excellent Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa that The Cork Dork was later informed to be Kosher.
“I was aware that there were some quality wines out there that were labeled Kosher, but I had no idea what that really meant. I was shocked and amazed,” he writes. “The wine was the 2006 Covenant, by winemaker Jeff Morgan. I have since been fascinated by a world of Kosher wine out there that I had no idea existed. I urge those of you close to a Kosher winery to visit and you’ll be very surprised about what it really takes. Jeff’s site has tons of great information on it as well to get you started on what makes wine Kosher.”
Sometimes you just gotta have a beer. When we want beer around here, we’re
big fans of New Belgium Brewing Company–Fat Tire Amber Ale is a
standard in our fridge and in winter, I love 2 degrees below. So I was
excited to discover:
New Belgium Mothership Wit.In
its first foray into organic brews, New Belgium Brewing of Fort
Collins, Colorado, struck gold with this Belgian-style wheat beer. The
brewers practice what they preach by incorporating green building
design, using wind power and promoting transportation alternatives;
after a year’s employment, brewery workers get a customized bike.
From Michigan Riesling to Tasmania Pinot Noir, from Spanish Garnacha to Tennessee Chambourcin, there sure were a lot of possible pairings (and threesomes, and foursomes) put together by the 33 participants who took up the challenge.
Here’s the Vino V White Hawk syrah I compared with hazyblur’s Adelaide Plaines. For how other wines fared, check out Remy’s Round-Up including other shiraz/syrah pairings and more here.
Rumor has it next month will be KOSHER wines! Find out more here. Whoo hoo!! I just happen to live a few miles away from HERZOG, which makes buckets of kosher wine! Perfect excuse to get over there and do some serious tasting!
I’m fortunate to live in the prime grape growing and wine producing region of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties–and, until just recently, just a few miles away from the Grateful Palate warehouse facility in Oxnard (it’s now in Fairfield near Napa).
I’ve long been a fan of Adam Tolmach’s Ojai Vineyard from back in the day when I had a print column “The Art Predator” for a weekly where I reviewed art shows, restaurants and whatever took my fancy, and was paid primarily in trade, mostly food and drink (I could never say I was a starving artist.)
We had lots of trade at an Ojai restaurant which carried Adam Tolmach’s wines and I was thrilled to get to know many of them by the glass. It seemed that wine maker Tolmach often dropped off the odd bottle or two of wine that wouldn’t find its way onto a typical list or store. In particular, I remember being floored by one of his syrahs back in 1998.
So when I learned that Michael Meagher was a disciple of Adam Tolmach and was making his own wines under the Vino V label (V as in Ventura), that his limited edition wines (600 cases) are carried by restaurants like Campanile, and that his daughter was in my son’s kindergarten class, I wanted to get my hands on some and try it!
With this Wine Blogging Wednesday hosted by Remy Charest, pitting north vs south, here was a perfect opportunity to put a tasting together using a Vino V wine. Continue reading →
Two questions: Where do you cellar your wine? And what should I drink from mine?
in the late 1950s, my grandfather built a wine cellar into the hillside of his house, the floor made from water-washed Japanese stones used as ballast in a ship almost a hundred years ago.
He enjoyed his wine, but it didn’t take anything too exotic to please him–he drank chianti by the jug, the more unusual or interesting wines in the cellar supplied by friends. One day I will inventory what’s there and see if any of it is drinkable, much less valuable for more than a conversation or two.
Conveniently for me, my grandfather’s nearly empty wine cellar is less than a mile from my house as the crow flies, right up the hill from where we live near the beach. It’s just far enough away to keep me from ransacking it regularly, and it allows me to forget exactly what’s in there allowing the wine to age well past what it would if it was underneath our house which also maintains cellar like temperatures most of the year.
For this Remy Charest’s Wine Blogging Wednesday, I decided to do syrahs (no surprise to anyone who knows my fondness for them!), and to compare Vino V’s White Hawk syrah with something from Down Under. So yesterday I headed up to the cellar to see what I had stored that would be a worthy competitor to Michael Meagher’s wine. Continue reading →
That would be: a report from the Millenium Wine Group tasting last Wednesday, Wine Bloggging Wednesday, bottling day at Old Creek Ranch Winery, some current wine deals (and a few wines to avoid) at Big Lots and more …just as soon as I get my notes together and some coffee in my cup!
In this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday, host Remy Charest the Wine Case challenges us to taste, to discuss, and to blog about not one but two wines: one from the “south” and one from the “north.”
I met Remy at the Wine Bloggers Conference last October when we strolled the vineyards of Quivera with a small group then I sat next to him at lunch. Now I often visit his blog and I follow him on Twitter, so I was happy to find out he was offering this month’s prompt which includes these closing words:
The one restriction is that the wines should be comparable in nature: Bordeaux blends from Bordeaux and Australia, sauvignon blanc from the Loire and from California, cabernet franc from the Niagara and Long Island, riesling from Washington State and Spring Mountain, etc. If you compare a Barossa shiraz with a chablis… well there just isn’t much actual comparing to do, right?
You have until March 18 to find these wines, taste them – and while you’re at it, see how they compare with a same dish. Put your tasting notes up on your blog, put up a link as a comment on this blog, and you’re all set. Heck, if you don’t have a blog, you can just put up a tasting note as a comment here, and I’ll include it in my roundup, on the weekend of the 21st of March – the official beginning of spring.
Cheers to everyone, and thanks a bunch to Lenn Thompson, founder of the WBW, for letting me in on the fun.
How to decide what to drink? A French Rhone wine with a California or Australian style rhone? A coupla GSMs perhaps like Twisted Oak’s with one from AUS? A California favorite like a syrah with an AUS favorite syrah from Grateful Palate? What about a northern California syrah and a southern California one? Hmmn, I’ve been wanting to try Vino V’s Michael Meagher’s Syrah–maybe this is finally the time!
Notice any trends? Bet I’ll be writing about something red for Wednesday!
New Belgium Mothership Wit.
March’s host Remy Charest writes:
I’m fortunate to live in the prime grape growing and wine producing region of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties–and, until just recently, just a few miles away from the Grateful Palate warehouse facility in Oxnard (it’s now in Fairfield near Napa).
Two questions: Where do you cellar your wine? And what should I drink from mine?
