New for 2010 - Polls!

If you're reading this, you probably know a lot of my thoughts on wine, and I want to know yours too! So every month there will be a new poll to answer! Please let me know your opinions! :)

Book Review: The Wine Trials

The tag line to this book says “Brown bag blind tastings reveal the surprising wine values under $15” and it is FASCINATING! The main idea behind this book is that the wines recommended to us by wine critics, magazines, and websites are not actually the wines preferred by everyday wine drinkers. This research was done using 500+ wine tasters from all walks of life (experts and non) and from 17 separate tastings all over the U.S. All I have to say to that is… WHERE… WAS… I???

Anyway, the results are amazing. For example, they compared Dom Perignon, a $150 French champagne, to a $12 sparkling wine from Washington. In a blind tasting, guess which one was preferred 2 to 1… that’s right the cheap one! (It’s Domaine St. Michelle Cuvee Brut for those of you who might go pick it up!) That’s just the beginning. In fact, overall results show that from more that 6,000 glasses of wine served from brown paper bags, people actually preferred the less expensive ones! “Tasters preferred a $9 bottle of Beringer Founders’ Estate Cabernet Sauvignon to a $120 wine from the same grape and same producer: Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.” WHAT!? 

The book goes into theories about why all this is. Mainly image, advertising, selling a lifestyle kind of thing. People buy the $150 Dom because they have heard it’s amazing. It's what cool and rich people drink, and they want to have it. In fact, it DOES taste better BECAUSE of all this. But in a blind tasting, where price, prestige, and even region are concealed, people prefer cheaper wine.

There really is so much more to this book than I have room to write, and the fact that it mixes wine and psychology is why I love it so much. Now the REALLY cool thing about this book is that about ¾ of it is a listing of the top 100 wines that are under $15 and that people actually preferred to the more expensive ones. Some of these make me a little skeptical -  included in this list are some box wines, Yellow Tails, Barefoots, and other wines you might normally pass over in the wine aisle. But you better believe I will be trying some of these in the near future and giving my opinions. GET THIS BOOK!

Specs Wine Tasting

The first Specs tasting of the new year is a cause for celebration! On the menu were definitely more obscure wines than usual which was exciting. There was a torrontes, carmenere, albarino, prosecco, and lots of French and Italian wines. There was an Uma Torrontes, which was clearly the favorite of the night - at only $7 it was the only wine sold out. The Tres Valles Carmenere was good (but not as good as the Terra Andina). There was a white burgundy, which is really just French chardonnay, and that was pretty good, as well as the Martin Codax albarino. Five bad ones (lets not focus on those), and the rest were just ok.

I didn't end up buying any wine this time, because nothing really jumped out at me. I did, however, get some manchego they were sampling, as well as 2 cheeses which were getting a little moldy and so were 50% off. Thats not a problem for me, I just cut off that tiny but of mold.  

I like bad wine

Yes, I really like bad wine. I don’t like to buy a bottle of it, or even drink a whole glass, but I DO like to taste wines I don’t like. For one thing, I think its just fascinating how many ways there are for wine to taste. There are almost countless flavors, and throw in all the smells and its just endless. Sometimes I taste wine and think “whoa yuck… but what IS that taste… is that robitussin? Lentil stew? Grass?” Secondly, the wines I don’t like make me appreciate the wines I do like even more. How will I know what “good” tastes like unless I know what it shouldn’t taste like? And finally, I feel like it helps me develop my overall tastes. Very often, I try wines I’m almost sure I wont like (sauvignon blanc for example), because I’m hoping to be surprised. I love love love to be surprised by wines, and I’m looking for that wow factor. Probably 90% of moscatos and Rieslings taste good to me, so it’s not that exciting to find one I like. However, I do NOT like about 90% of chardonnays I try, so finding one of those I like is amazing.

So that is one reason why I go to all these wine tastings around town, and especially love wine flights. I like to try everything – good, bad, expensive, or cheap. 

Wine Does a Body Good

I try to live a healthy lifestyle and along with all my wine and cheese, I like to run. This weekend I did the 3M half marathon and despite an achy knee, finished in 2 hours, 13 minutes, and 53 seconds J. And I had wine the night before!

Wine Glasses

I have been a disgrace to red wine drinkers everywhere. I drink all my wine in the same glasses, which are pretty small. Wine people always talk about what a difference the size and shape of your glass can have on the taste of the wine, but I guess until now I never really thought about it. Time for a change! Apparently some wine article published the best glasses for tasting wine in, and Crate and Barrel had one of the top glasses for only $5! Needless to say, I was there in a jiffy and am now the proud owners of 2 bulbous 22 oz wine glasses J Can I taste a difference using them? Time will tell…

Here is my old wine glass with the new ones for comparison.

Campo Viejo Tempranillo

This is a fairly inexpensive tempranillo that I bought from Grapevine as an everyday drinking wine. Having no special occasion to open wine (other than I wanted some), I thought it would be a good choice. In the past, I have really liked tempranillos, but unfortunately I thought this one was just ok. One of the things I hate for a red wine to be is thin and acidic, and this had a little bit of that going on.  I tried a little over 3 nights and it was consistently average. With so many wines to try, average is simply not good enough to buy again. :( I give it a 5.