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I'm sure I've said this on a prior thread, or in a dozen comment threads, but it's a useful approach to the whole conventional/organic/biodynamic/vegan/sustainable arguments. I've had really bad kosher wines and I've had spectacular kosher wines. Since I'm not Jewish, I don't really care whether or not the grapes were picked only by men, not on the sabbath, and that one out of seven fields are left fallow every year. Ultimately the quality of the wine for me depends on the region, grape, weather, and skill of the winemaker. If you are Jewish, I'm not bothered that these things are important to you, and will hope that you seek out the better bottles that are available. There's great kosher Bordeaux, for instance. There is a real market out there for people that are into all-natural or organic or vegan wines. And again, I've had good and bad representatives of all of them. I'm not that target demographic, but I don't get bothered by it. I have argued in the past that small production wines tend to produce really unique bottles (not necessarily better, but interesting), and these operations tend to be pretty small. So you'll see a lot more variation between vintages and occasional surprises. For me, that's fun and exciting. But if you want more predictability (certainly not a sin when you're plopping down $20-80 a bottle), there are plenty of big producers on the market.
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Jun 1, 2012 03:53
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pork never goes bad posted:The point is not to make the wine that tastes best (presumably what you mean by "the wine [came] out great"), the point is to make the wine that tastes truest, or most honest, or perhaps the wine that is truest or most honest. This sentence has no apparent meaning. It has words and they seem to be in some sort of order but there is no actual substance there. Define an 'true or honest wine' in some way that has meaning other than "didn't use some long established methodology and got a good result anyway" and maybe I'd be able to parse it.
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Jun 1, 2012 14:06
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Murgos posted:
I like these terms, and I'm going to define it by cost to taste ratio. Honest and true under $10 thats actually drinkable, not some dishonest liar of a wine thats stolen $20 from me!
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Jun 2, 2012 00:45
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Murgos posted:This sentence has no apparent meaning. It has words and they seem to be in some sort of order but there is no actual substance there. Define an 'true or honest wine' in some way that has meaning other than "didn't use some long established methodology and got a good result anyway" and maybe I'd be able to parse it. You're either an idiot, or you're being obstinate. Plenty of wine drinkers care about more than the taste of the wine. They care about whether the wine misrepresents itself, they care about the history of what is in the glass, or the historicity perhaps. I, and plenty of others, care about the role that the wine I am drinking right now plays in some larger narrative. Perhaps an analogy is in order. We commonly make distinctions in ethics between ethical systems which are deontological, and those which are utilitarian. There are, of course, other systems. But the distinction between the utilitarian ethical intuition and the non-utilitarian ethical intuition is a useful one. Is the murderer wrong because he killed a man, or because of the kind of person he is, because of the intent he had, &etc. When the man who intends to drat one thousand ends up, instead, through no fault or desire of his own, saving this same thousand, is he a demon, or an angel? We find these sorts of dilemma easy to parse. They are not complex. And the disagreement, too, is easy to parse. Simplifying things to just intent, or just results, is itself a strong position - one which requires more than throwing one's hands up to support. In this case, you are taking the utilitarian stand. You claim that "a good result" is what is important. You focus on what many people term "what is in the glass." I, and many natural wine fans, on the other hand, widen what we mean by "what is in the glass" to include it's context, the agricultural and cultural history behind it. I do, obviously, care about what my wine tastes like. But I also care about it's place in a narrative (viz, the role of humanity in the natural world) that I care deeply about. If you don't, or refuse to, see the potential importance of this kind of fact, then you are being willfully ignorant. If none of this has any purchase, then here is a putative definition of a true wine, and of an honest wine. A true wine expresses it's place. An honest wine does not misrepresent itself. Of course, in evaluating whether some wine or another meets these criteria we will appeal to our values: our identification of some reddish purple liquid as wine is itself value laden. And our identification of it as good, or as bad, flawed or delicious, all inherently and inescapably value-laden. If Kuhn and Feyarabend have taught us anything, it's this.
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Jun 2, 2012 06:19
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Murgos posted:This sentence has no apparent meaning. It has words and they seem to be in some sort of order but there is no actual substance there. Define an 'true or honest wine' in some way that has meaning other than "didn't use some long established methodology and got a good result anyway" and maybe I'd be able to parse it. "Hurrrr de durr I don't pick no bottles off no natural vines all winemaking is interventionist yurp yurp yurp." Other than egotistical bloggers, this is the other thing that makes the natural wine "debate" loving stupid. Go listen to actual old school "natural" vingerons. Marcel Lapierre for example: clearly a dude who valued spiritual wine mumbo-jumbo over technical analysis and science.
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Jun 4, 2012 06:51
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pork never goes bad posted:You're either an idiot, or you're being obstinate. And you're being extremely pretentious. If the wine tastes bad, then no one cares that it represents the badness of the land it comes from. It has to be at least palatable to even have a discussion of it. So, so much for truth regardless of taste as you have expressed it. Honest, the way you've defined it here, is even worse. Wine has no inherent honesty, it is a manipulated product from the get go. It's very first step to becoming a thing requires considered human intervention, when to plant/pick the grapes. Screw it up by a little bit and you have changed there character of the wine entirely. So, for a wine to not 'mis-represent itself' it should seem to have be void of human intervention, yet, that is impossible. So, yeah, philosophy again posits to understand something by not making any attempt at understanding what makes it a thing, as usual.
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Jun 4, 2012 21:07
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Murgos posted:And you're being extremely pretentious. I think his definition was a little verbose. Many people believe wine should show where it's from. If you bathe the soil and vines in chemicals, over-extract the hell out of it, over oak it, etc. etc. you end up with something that represents the winemaker's heavy handed approach, rather than tasting like the place it comes from. There is a reason Old World wines are more popular for blind tasting. It's because the winemakers usually strive to have place show through in the wine, so it can reasonably be guessed with a discerning palate. Chalky minerals in the soil will definitely show through in Germany, for example. If the winemakers left it on the lees and stirred em around, and aged it in new oak that beautiful minerality would get destroyed and it would no longer represent where it was from, but rather the winemaker's techniques.
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Jun 5, 2012 10:24
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Awesome OP. Where was this thread when I needed it? Last summer I visited my girlfriend in Würzburg, Germany. I drank so much local wine and I fell in love with every bottle. It was so delicious and completely changed my attitude towards alcohol, which was "lots of fun but it tastes like poo poo". This was delicious AND fun. I didn't really know what the hell it was that I was drinking. I might be going back this summer. If I do, I'm going to keep a journal of all the fancy wine terms and report back. Also, I don't know what those guys in the whisky thread are talking about. One night we ran out of wine and we found a bottle of Scottish whisky. It was the most foul poo poo I have ever tasted. I kept yelling "RACING FUEL!" before every shot. Then I passed out for a few hours, woke up, puked, passed out, and had a day-long hangover afterwards. I think the remarkable thing about wine is that no matter how much I gulped down into the bottomless pit that is my stomach, I never felt too bad the next day. It is truly a beautiful beverage.
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Jun 5, 2012 13:18
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Aws posted:Also, I don't know what those guys in the whisky thread are talking about. One night we ran out of wine and we found a bottle of Scottish whisky. It was the most foul poo poo I have ever tasted. I kept yelling "RACING FUEL!" before every shot. Then I passed out for a few hours, woke up, puked, passed out, and had a day-long hangover afterwards. I found your problem. Do not shoot Scotch.
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Jun 5, 2012 18:13
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Crimson posted:I found your problem. Do not shoot Scotch. I won't try to argue against the suggestion that I am an idiot, because I am an idiot. I will say that I did try to enjoy it properly at first, but I found the taste so foul that shooting it seemed to be the most logical thing to do at the time. A logical person would have simply stopped drinking when they ran out of drinks they actually enjoyed. But a drunk person is not a logical person.
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Jun 5, 2012 22:27
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Crimson posted:Do not shoot Scotch. Incorrect.
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Jun 6, 2012 06:17
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4liters posted:Incorrect.
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Jun 6, 2012 07:45
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4liters posted:Incorrect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i86xFOAVLI#t=3m53s
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Jun 6, 2012 10:37
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Tweek posted:I've been saving this bottle for a special occasion. Not sure what yet. I have it in my mind it would be cool to save it until someone has been born who would be impressed by the year 2005. I love my Bordeaux so I will try and help you out here. One thing I like to do with these cheaper Bordeaux wines is look back at previous vintages that are similar or well regarded and see how the wine held up. Looking at 2000, there are a couple of good notes that give hope that the wine will hold together for five or more years. Looking back a bit further, some notes mention the wine losing it's fruit, or being "over the hill". My advice would be to drink it with a good meal sometime soon, especially if it has not been properly stored. Wine is very much a living thing, and some wines do not respond well being left at room temperature in an temperature uncontrolled enviroment. If it has been properly stored, sure, sit on it another couple-few years and keep an eye on cellartracker scores. If it's been in a drawer under the sink or a liqour cabinet for the last 5 years I would say pop it and drink it now as it might have problems. How long have you had it? I used to be a person who bought Bordeaux wines on release with the intention of saving them for a special occasion. Eventually I found out that Bordeaux wine is some of the easiest wine to get on the secondary market that has already been aged. Maybe not the cheaper examples like this one, but there is a ton of classed Bordeaux with age out there for sale. Unless I find a good deal I have pretty much stopped buying. I DO still buy the cheaper stuff on release though. One other thing: 2005 was a very well regarded year in Bordeaux, if you ever want to buy someone a birth year wine down the road, I guarantee you that you will be able to source a bottle from 2005 rather easily. (though not cheaply) That vintage will be available forever as it has good aging potential. Second edit: Just because a vintage is regarded as good does not mean the wine will age well. Some wines, like these cheaper Bordeauxs, just don't have the ability to age that long. A wines ability to age depends on many factors, producer, age of vineyard, terroir, etc etc. 4/20 NEVER FORGET fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Jun 10, 2012 |
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Jun 10, 2012 13:48
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Thank you so much, 4/20. My friends will be thrilled you just scored them a glass of nice wine in the near future. I've had it for a few years and I would not call it properly stored. I really need to get a wine fridge on of these days. I'll admit to a slight bit of embarrassment; I thought this wine was nicer than it seems it is considered. Time to fine a new bottle to age! *bonzai*
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Jun 14, 2012 16:57
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"Cheap" is a very relative term. What 4/20 means isn't that it's the French equivalent to Two-Buck Chuck or that it isn't a nice wine. Bordeaux is just expensive in general, so to many people even a $50 bottle is on the "cheap" side.
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Jun 14, 2012 17:59
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I am loving so in love with petillant naturel right now. I have like three cases of sparkling Loire Gamay and I'm thinking about getting more. It isn't much of a panty-dropper; it's more of a panty-liquifier-as-they-fly-straight-out-the-windower. Not that I want to overburden their pretty busy mailing list, but check out Selection Massale if you're interested. La Bulle Gamay from P-U-R and Buena Onda from Jeremy Quastana. The latter is a new vigneron who worked under Olivier Lemasson; buy some of his wines cause they're fuckin legit, because he's loving legit, and because he just lost 100% of his fruit this year (frost damage afaik) and could use the support. He does a Cot that's also nice - I tried a bit and it was very light and feminine, almost more like a Gamay.
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Jun 15, 2012 04:02
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Selection Massale is an excellent mailing list. I could never bring myself to actually dive in and order, but I'm definitely thinking about switching away from Garagiste and onto SM entirely. Jeremy Quastana's wine is really, seriously, good. Perhaps less strange than some of the stuff Lemasson puts out, but the influence is definitely there.
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Jun 16, 2012 04:31
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You're in the bay iirc, so picking up shouldn't be too hard. Seriously recommend you try ordering through them - just about everything I've had so far has been great, basically to the point that I don't really question things anymore. Start easy - I think they still have some '09 Debize Morgon; it's loving awesome for the price. There's a lesser cuvée that's also awesome, L'homme du veste or something like that. And P-U-R stuff is consistently yummy. Some of the wine they sell is serious business but a lot is also "glou-glou" - cellerable or not, it doesn't matter cause you're gonna drink the hell out of it before it gets old.
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Jun 16, 2012 06:22
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That is essentially the problem! When I was on the list, I wanted literally every mailing they send out, and in volume. It's terrifying. I think I will sign up, though - Garagiste shipping is getting annoying, and as you said pick-up will be easy. Will have to get about 6 more bottles from them, though, to round out the case. Either way, signed back up for SM 
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Jun 17, 2012 02:20
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Alexander the Grape posted:"Cheap" is a very relative term. What 4/20 means isn't that it's the French equivalent to Two-Buck Chuck or that it isn't a nice wine. Bordeaux is just expensive in general, so to many people even a $50 bottle is on the "cheap" side. Thank you Alexander for responding to that. The wine you have here is probably quite good at the price, as the CT notes suggest. As you said though it has been stored under sub-optimal conditions so I would get into sooner rather than later, with a hearty meal of red sauce pasta or a steak. If you like Bordeaux, check out wines from the 2009 vintage. They are more forward with their fruit and are drinking quite well young.
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Jun 18, 2012 09:00
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4/20 NEVER FORGET posted:If you like Bordeaux, check out wines from the 2009 vintage. They are more forward with their fruit and are drinking quite well young. To be honest, I'm a date whore. In this case I wanted to have an old bottle of wine on hand for the sake of having an old bottle, hence my plan to hang onto my little friend for a decade or so. I suppose I should invest in proper storage equipment before I try that again. If I'm buying a wine because I like the wine, I usually shop syrah.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:26
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So buy older wine! http://www.klwines.com/detail.asp?sku=1015648 http://www.klwines.com/detail.asp?sku=1027655 http://www.klwines.com/detail.asp?sku=1063677 http://www.klwines.com/detail.asp?sku=1075162 All of these are really excellent, and the prices are quite good. Since storing most wine for longer than a few months or so requires fairly good conditions, and since there is a cost to purchasing storage equipment, and an opportunity cost to having a bottle in it for so long, and an operating cost in terms of electricity to run it, it's often cheaper to buy long-term aged wine at the aged price, if you can find it.
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Jun 18, 2012 18:05
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pork never goes bad posted:So buy older wine! Excellent post, and I will definitely look into it as the idea of a bottle from 199* gets me off. I still need to invest in storage equipment, as I am looking to have a bottle of old wine, though not necessarily drink one right now.
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Jun 18, 2012 18:43
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I'm a big fan of a local winery here in South Australia called Temple Bruer. They makes some really amazing stuff completely preservative free. No sulfur dioxide, organic certified and vegan friendly. What does that mean to joe average wine drinker? A better product with less hangovers. No, I don't work for them, I just buy lots of their booze. They don't export to the USA, but you can get it in Canada, UK and many countries in Europe. Their other label is Enoomah Bore. Other local wineries which do export widely and are generally excellent include: d'Arenberg, Wirra Wirra, Peter Lehmann and Turkey Flat. Generally it is hard to go wrong with an Aussie wine except for Yellow Tail and Rosemont.
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Jun 19, 2012 08:01
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Funny that everyone hates Rosemount even though it's the same company as Penfolds and Wolf Blass and people can't seem to get enough of them. The grapes usually come from the same vineyards and most of them go to the same winery in the Barossa. Rosemount isn't even the bottom tier, I think a Wolf Blass label has that honour. I worked for a company that bottled Temple Bruer wines and it was a loving pain the rear end to get the lines cleaned the way he wanted with no chemical sanitisers.
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Jun 19, 2012 08:13
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4liters of megapurple
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Jun 19, 2012 17:34
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Hi I am trying to find a decent bargain Madeira wine. Unfortunately I am in Pennsylvania and we have pretty strict laws about shipping in wine from outside the state. You can search the list here: http://www.lcbapps.lcb.state.pa.us/webapp/product_management/psi_productdefault_inter.asp Obviously I should not be getting the $5 bottle.
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Jun 20, 2012 00:13
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Insane Totoro posted:Hi I am trying to find a decent bargain Madeira wine. Unfortunately I am in Pennsylvania and we have pretty strict laws about shipping in wine from outside the state. I don't have much to add, but http://finewineandgoodspirits.com is much better than the old PA LCB site. You can even order some things online (even though you can only get them shipped to your local store).
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Jun 20, 2012 00:17
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Cpt Underpants posted:I'm a big fan of a local winery here in South Australia called Temple Bruer. They makes some really amazing stuff completely preservative free. No sulfur dioxide, organic certified and vegan friendly. No they're not. Ok, vegan friendly maybe, but strictly vegan no. Not unless vegans can drink earwigs.
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Jun 20, 2012 02:33
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Haha I hadn't thought of that, with the number of lizards and locusts and other sundry bugs we found dejuiced in the skins after pressing no wine is truly vegan friendly unless it's hand picked.
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Jun 20, 2012 04:43
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Hand picked fruit is definitely cleaner, but even hand picked, cluster sorted, destemmed, berry sorted must contains a fair percentage of bugs. I've always wondered if anyone had ever studied the effects of bug-derived nutrients on fermentation.
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Jun 20, 2012 07:59
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I wondered the same thing last year when thousands of crickets were getting into each tank. Obviously they were big tanks so a kilo of cricket isn't really noticeable but it wasn't a good look. I imagine if you freeze one solid with dry ice then crush it up in a mortar and pestle you could run it through the same YAN analysis as the must.
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Jun 20, 2012 13:11
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Anybody here in the business? Also, I'm looking for more wine books as suggestions to help me organize and retain the data about different regions and wines, because the ASA textbook is a loving shitpile on fire.
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Jun 20, 2012 18:06
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4liters posted:I imagine if you freeze one solid with dry ice then crush it up in a mortar and pestle you could run it through the same YAN analysis as the must. That's a great idea. The next question would be how the nitrogen becomes available relative to alcohol content. I'm also curious about effects on protein stability. I've always thought the hard part of any real world trials would be getting a sans insectes control.
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Jun 21, 2012 07:01
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Stitecin posted:That's a great idea. The next question would be how the nitrogen becomes available relative to alcohol content. I'm also curious about effects on protein stability. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL4Fz8qNtzs&t=71s
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Jun 21, 2012 07:16
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Insane Totoro posted:Hi I am trying to find a decent bargain Madeira wine. Unfortunately I am in Pennsylvania and we have pretty strict laws about shipping in wine from outside the state. Wine.com ships a subset of their wine to Pennsylvania (go to the site and it'll ask you to pick your state - after that, anything listed can be shipped). Also, I think a bill to allow domestic wineries to ship to PA passed the senate a while back, but I'm not sure what happened to it. Google News is just giving me results for the recent attempt to allow private stores and restaurants to sell bottles. We live in a lovely state 
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Jun 21, 2012 17:42
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4liters posted:This would take care of the bugs I'd imagine: Those things are amazing, I've never used one but I would really like to see one in person. Honestly we have a shaker table that is a lot like the one they're using before the Collopack and very few bugs make it past even that. It works a lot better when you don't let the channels fill up with stems though. Stitecin fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Jun 22, 2012 |
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Jun 22, 2012 06:40
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A company I worked for wanted to get one, the trials my friend did at Adelaide uni showed it worked amazingly well at reducing the green flavours from cab sav by removing leaves, bits of stalk and unripe berries. The trouble was the accountants realised it would mean paying their growers more because the wine was a higher grade and hosed if they were going to spend $15k on a sorting table if it meant paying growers who invested nothing in the scheme 50% more or something. Basically, gently caress accountants.
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Jun 22, 2012 15:32
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4liters posted:The trouble was the accountants realised it would mean paying their growers more because the wine was a higher grade and hosed if they were going to spend $15k on a sorting table if it meant paying growers who invested nothing in the scheme 50% more or something. Basically, gently caress accountants. Did you try telling them to stop their wineing? 
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Jun 22, 2012 18:11
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