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So today I had some Menetou Salon, a 2010 by Franck Millet. A wonderful Pinot Noir that tastes somewhat like Burgundy, but nothing like what you might expect if your experience to Pinot is what passes for such in my great state (CA?!?). Wonderful, bright, low alcohol. As always, it seems I can trust K&L. Next month, starting 11/1, I plan to drink only wine from 1990 or before for 2-3 months, largely as an experiment - aged wine seems to me to be wasted on me, despite my experience. I'd like to try a wide variety of older wine to get a handle on it. I've got a short list of plenty of bottles from K&L and some other local vendors (some old Couly-Dutheil, some Lanessan), but to last the quarter or so I want to devote to this, I'll need approximately 12 additional bottles. Any suggestions in SF or the Northern Bay Area? If people make suggestions, I'll track tasting notes and prices here - I reckon I can come under $30 per bottle and drink some wonderful old wine and have an experience that I couldn't otherwise have.
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Oct 26, 2012 07:33
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| # ? May 10, 2024 12:38 |
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I've been buying a bunch of wines over the last few years (Not tonnes, but not only a couple a year) mainly in the AU$5-20 range. Because I like wine but am poor. Nah, in reality I've had good experience with cheap wine (Bar a few stinkers) because it's typically a "wine at dinner" or "lazy sunny afternoon wine and book on the patio" drinking times. Or for cooking and I drink the bottle after using a splash. Anyway, I've begun to develop a preference for different types of wine. For example, I like my whites to be fairly fruity but with a cutting bite of acidity (Just a little though). I like my reds to be more "mellow" but "fuller" and having more spicy flavours. I do however have two questions. First, is whether it's because I buy cheap wine that sometimes they (Usually whites actually) seem a tad too sour and while I can handle that (It's usually an aftertaste) it makes me salivate a lot, which I feel a tad embarrassed about because it makes me feel like I can't handle the wine. The second is that I can not stand Chardonnay. Pretty much any other varietal I can drink but Chardonnay smells and tastes like the smell of gasoline to me. I'm not sure how else to describe it. Is this a normal thing? Have I just had rubbish Chardonnays? If the latter I'd love a good, cheap Chardonnay I can get from Dan Murpheys in Australia.
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Nov 2, 2012 08:33
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To address your first point, the sourness you are seeing is probably because the wine had a lot of tartaric acid added to it during production. Cheap wines come from hot regions and hot regions produce grapes with lower acid so it becomes necessary to add more. Better winemakers will add some malic acid and citric acid (the other two acids found naturally in grapes) as well to avoid the hard, almost crunchy acidity that too much tartaric can cause. You might be reacting to the oak that often gets added to chardonnay, in which case try and find one that claims to be unwooded. The guys in Dan's are normally pretty helpful with requests like that. If it's not the wood that makes you hate them, then try drinking slightly more expensive wines as they are likely to have been made from better grapes with more attention to detail. I don't know if Dan Murphy's stocks it but Mike Press has a reputation for making really good cheap chardonnay, otherwise go for the Jacobs Creek Reserve Chardonnay, that range is pretty much the benchmark for value for money wine.
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Nov 2, 2012 22:40
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Cyprus vintage photos at last! The local grape varieties can literally grow on almost solid rock  Some last minute additions to the winery  Bottling stuff to empty tanks and make room for 2012 wine  Bush vines, they could make some seriously good grog if the growers weren't as useless as they are  Picking Semilon  The sorting table with the worlds most overqualified grape sorter standing on the left:   Semilon in the press:  Nice 'soil':    Filling barrels  Some of the growers were pretty old school  Rack and returns   The jungle vineyard  I found this little guy chilling on a barrel  This tank had a lovely texture  The other Cyprus Problem: fuckin Maratheftiko  Commandaria grapes drying out. Yes, one of the local peasants thought it would be ok to drive on them    You can't legally make Commandaria outside of the region so the winery got loaded on a truck and driven 30kms to a villiage in the region  It came out at 26Be  The last night of sorting  The last crate  The last grape is on the table, suddenly everyone is smiling  I don't think they'll live to see the next vintage somehow  
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Nov 3, 2012 11:41
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Nice! I went to Cyprus once but totally forgot to check out the local vines. Cyprus is really beautiful although the party scene is overrun with British tourists, which makes it and the breakfast buffets in the hotels a very sorry affair.
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Nov 3, 2012 18:13
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Most of the local wines are truly awful, with only 5-6 wineries getting it right consistently so the chances are you didn't really miss much. More of them have one wine on their list turn out god each year, more by good luck than good management. The Russian tourists there are way cooler than the poms by the way.
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Nov 3, 2012 21:16
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Nice pictures, thanks for sharing. I really love seeing behind the scenes stuff. Do any wineries just use wild yeasts on the fruit? Despite home-brewing mead, cider and beer for the last year I'm very unfamiliar with commercial wine-making processes.
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Nov 5, 2012 03:42
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There are lots of wineries that ferment through native yeasts (although using words like "native" and "wild" are a touch inaccurate, afaik), and thanks to the Herculean efforts of wine bloggers there are entire tea parties worth of tempests to sort through regarding natural wine. Funny part is, most of the real vingerons (actual farmer/winemakers) really don't give a poo poo about the blogfest; they're just passionate about the farming & winemaking
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Nov 6, 2012 02:40
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Un-inoculated ferments can be risky and where I've seen it done commercially it's been a small batch that makes up part of a larger blend.
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Nov 6, 2012 03:03
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Loving those photos, 4liters, thanks for sharing. I love this time of year, my Facebook feed is filled with harvest and winery photos as all of the wineries ferment and the put the wines in barrel.
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Nov 8, 2012 00:52
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4liters posted:Un-inoculated ferments can be risky and where I've seen it done commercially it's been a small batch that makes up part of a larger blend. There's some element of chance, but it feels like if you're farming right and growing the right varieties for the area (ie you don't end up with crazy, out-of-balance grapes at harvest), native ferments are really not a big deal. The biggest challenge is letting go of your control and not acting - I mean, if it's a little stinky give it an extra punchdown or two, but for the most part if you have healthy grapes and a healthy winery you don't see very many problems.
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Nov 8, 2012 17:45
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Yeah once you've done a few in a winery and they've come out OK it's probably safe to do whole batches but I'd still be careful. Nothing like having all of the flagship red stick at 10g/L and go volatile to bring the bosses down on you like a ton of bricks.
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Nov 9, 2012 00:42
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I'm speaking through a pico-boutique point of view... Guy I worked with does approximately 600-700 cases, so usually a macro bin or two at a time. If you're doing larger lots you could always pre-start a couple of small fermentations just in case and use them to inoculate any troubled ferments...
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Nov 9, 2012 09:18
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At one of the wineries I've worked harvest we didn't inoculate any of the pinot or chardonnay. The pinot was destemmed, adjusted (brix, yan, pH), cold soaked, warmed, and left to whatever was in the air and whatever came in on the fruit. I thought, and still do, that ec1118 must have been the dominant house strain because it is what they used for all of their cabernet the year(s?) before. Another strain came in about half way through vintage with a completely different fermentation kinetic. With identical treatment the ferments began racing and the caps went from high and dry to foamy and soft. The chard was whole cluster pressed, settled for 24 hours, adjusted (brix, yan, pH), barreled down and left to whatever came in on the fruit. The used barrels were steamed and ozoned, so wouldn't have had much viable yeast. There were significant differences between the fermentation kinetics of different lots, but no significant differences between the new and used barrels within each lot. In my experience there's no reason not to try it, if you run a clean winery and stay on top of your ferments.
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Nov 10, 2012 05:00
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That reminds me... The winemaker made his first Pinot back in the mid-90's. Harvest was in full swing, and the then tiny amount of Pinot had been picked and crushed into a picking bin, with a pretty good chunk of Chardonnay tossed in as well (like 30%). It was basically forgotten most of the way through harvest - not inoculated or really even touched afaik, and then just pressed off and bottled on the lees. The few remaining bottles look hilarious, because there's literally about an inch of lees sitting on the bottom. Not tartaric deposits or sediment, but straight lees. The wine tastes great 18 years on, but pouring the last few sips is even trickier than normal...
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Nov 10, 2012 21:22
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You should flog them to some trendy winebar as natural wine.Stitecin posted:At one of the wineries I've worked harvest we didn't inoculate any of the pinot or chardonnay. I was never opposed to the idea of it, I just wouldn't commit an entire batch unless I was absolutely sure that wild ferments always gave good results in that winery. The other thin I think is a good idea is to inoculate them with a real trooper (ec1118, fx10) halfway through to make sure it doesn't stick. Most of the native yeast species have dies off completely by that time so all your doing is making sure there are enough healthy cells around to finish the job properly. The AWRI did a study a few years ago and found that if you'd ever used 1118 in the winery, that would be the dominant yeast at the end of and wild any fermentation.
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Nov 11, 2012 00:19
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4liters posted:You should flog them to some trendy winebar as natural wine.
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Nov 13, 2012 05:14
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I'm going to my cousin's tomorrow for thanksgiving tomorrow and wanted to get some nice bottles of wine. What would be some good compliments for typical thanksgiving food? She's a bit of a... snob I suppose, so I wouldn't mind spending a bit more to make sure it's a nice wine.
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Nov 22, 2012 03:28
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The thanksgivings I've been to have had such a wide range of food that any wine will match at least something. The food struck me as being quite rich so maybe a full bodied red would prove the most versatile style for the occasion. Can't recommend an exact wine because I don't know what you have available.
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Nov 22, 2012 03:47
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Full bodied red is, all things considered, quite a poor thanksgiving recommendation. Sparkling wine, perhaps a touch off dry, or lighter weight reds, think Burgundian, tend to be more versatile. A big red is just another big flavor, one which distracts rather than adding.
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Nov 22, 2012 04:00
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Centzon Totochtin posted:I'm going to my cousin's tomorrow for thanksgiving tomorrow and wanted to get some nice bottles of wine. What would be some good compliments for typical thanksgiving food? She's a bit of a... snob I suppose, so I wouldn't mind spending a bit more to make sure it's a nice wine. A bottle of a lighter red like Pinot Noir goes well with pretty much everything. Reisling is also a good choice.
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Nov 22, 2012 05:24
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Centzon Totochtin posted:I'm going to my cousin's tomorrow for thanksgiving tomorrow and wanted to get some nice bottles of wine. What would be some good compliments for typical thanksgiving food? She's a bit of a... snob I suppose, so I wouldn't mind spending a bit more to make sure it's a nice wine. Cru Beaujolais. It's delicious, it's good with a variety of foods, it pleases wine nerds and grandmas alike, AND it's inexpensive. You can get a really solid bottle of Cru Beaujolais for $20.
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Nov 22, 2012 07:23
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Drinking my first Beaujolais Nouveau right now. It's certainly interesting how forward the nose is about banana and raspberry. Too bad it is only available in the winter, this would be a baller summer wine. Also it is very acidic. Edit: Thn again, opening a Riesling Hochgewächs it's the same intensity of smell but more poo poo going on. Much better balance, too. What do you guys know/think about Spanish wine? Boner Slam fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Nov 22, 2012 |
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Nov 22, 2012 17:41
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Boner Slam posted:Drinking my first Beaujolais Nouveau right now. You should try some more serious Beaujolais as well - a Moulin à Vent with a bit of bottle age is pretty delicious. Spanish wine is fun. Recently I've been drinking a fair amount of Rioja from various 80s and 90s vintages - as a wine it definitely has the structure to age well. Wine from other parts of Spain is good too - stuff from the Duero valley, reds from Bierzo, Toro and Priorat are exciting. Don't discount the whites - Albarino, Verdejo and Godello grapes both produce pretty fabulous wines for matching with seafood and just general drinking. And sherry! People often ignore sherry but it's having a bit of a renaissance recently as people realise what a great food wine it can be and how much you get for your money.
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Nov 22, 2012 23:18
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Thought I'd post the Thanksgiving wines I'm drinking with the family since I made a somewhat snarky post earlier. I suggested to think Burgundian before, and that's what we've done. But not Burgundy - some oldish David Bruce Chalone Pinot Noir. A 1995 Chalone, no vineyard called out, and then 1998 and 1999 Brosseau Vineyard. I like Brosseau a lot, and somewhat regularly drink Testarossa's Pinots from there, but have never had David Bruce's wine from the vineyard. Quite excited! We also have a smattering of other bottles (currently working on some Priorat, 2005 Mosaic, with my pops, some bubbly and miscellaneous whites including one Muscadet I really want to try). All in all, a good wine day  On a slightly related note, did anybody else get their Garagiste shipment this season? I somewhat over-ordered - 6 cases arrived at my small San Francisco Apartment, and now I have yet another closet full of wine. I had room for maybe 16 bottles more! I've been making a dent in some other stuff I had, which I may post about later, but the Priorat I mentioned above is from Garagists. Anybody get anything cool/good?
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Nov 23, 2012 00:03
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Regarding Garagiste, how much does shipping end up being when you get your parcel? I read one report where it sounded like $4-5 per bottle. Is that accurate?
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Nov 23, 2012 04:58
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To San Francisco CA I paid 16 per case.
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Nov 23, 2012 05:24
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pork never goes bad posted:To San Francisco CA I paid 16 per case. Ah, thanks, I'm near you and that isn't too bad.
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Nov 23, 2012 06:57
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It definitely depends on how much you get and on the weather. They get faster shipping if they have to ship during hot weather, for example, and then they pass the costs on to the purchaser with the upside that your wine is less likely to spoil on truck.
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Nov 23, 2012 07:07
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Perfectly Cromulent posted:Cru Beaujolais. It's delicious, it's good with a variety of foods, it pleases wine nerds and grandmas alike, AND it's inexpensive. You can get a really solid bottle of Cru Beaujolais for $20. This, this, this. loving everybody says Pinot noir, but everyone goes and gets CA Pinot, which has turned into lovely massive fruit bombs for the most part. Beaujolais is generally much lighter and graceful, and you can get awesome, affordable stuff as well. I brought a sweet Gamay petnat and a 2009 (or was it '10?) Debize Morgon that went great with everything on the table. Also shared a bottle of white 05 Arena Patrimonio - I picked up half a case for like $15/bottle. A third have been flawed (thus the price afaik), but the good ones make it worth the try.
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Nov 23, 2012 20:16
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idiotsavant posted:This, this, this. loving everybody says Pinot noir, but everyone goes and gets CA Pinot, which has turned into lovely massive fruit bombs for the most part. Beaujolais is generally much lighter and graceful, and you can get awesome, affordable stuff as well. People think they can get good Pinot Noir for $20. Mostly, you can't. Yeah, I know that there are some wine nerds here (including me) who could probably name some obscure Pinot Noir that drinks well for $20. I love Pinot Noir, but it is one of the worst values in wine.
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Nov 24, 2012 08:21
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Ummmm, are you saying my 100% new oak 14.5 Santa Lucia Pinot is overpriced This poo poo is Burgundian, man. Burgundian!!
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Nov 24, 2012 16:52
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You can get phenomenal Pinot from menetou salon for under 20!!
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Nov 25, 2012 00:59
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pork never goes bad posted:You can get phenomenal Pinot from menetou salon for under 20!! You can also get terrible Pinot from Menatou Salon for under $20. That's why I won't make a general recommendation for wines from a semi-obscure appellation for Thanksgiving.
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Nov 25, 2012 04:48
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Perfectly Cromulent posted:People think they can get good Pinot Noir for $20. Mostly, you can't. Yeah, I know that there are some wine nerds here (including me) who could probably name some obscure Pinot Noir that drinks well for $20. I love Pinot Noir, but it is one of the worst values in wine. I used to be the guy who would disagree with you about this but I agree with it now. Especially if you live in a place where your selection is not as good; here in Portland there are MANY great Oregon Pinot Noir wines you can buy around $20. Having taken recent trips to CA and AZ, that is not the case. I am sure it is probably the same in other wine growing regions around the world, the good, underpriced, over-performing examples get snapped up fast, usually locally. The wines on my thanksgiving table were: 2010 Weingut Jakob Schneider Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle Riesling trocken MAGNUS and 2009 Fausse Piste Syrah Riverrock Vineyard (USA, Oregon, Walla Walla Valley) Both low alcohol, food friendly wines that ended up being perfect. My mom said the Riesling was the best wine she had tasted in her life, and my step-father said the Syrah was the best wine he had tasted I his life. Both are not wine people, so it's pretty easy to wow them. Anyone following all of the recent drama with Garagiste? It looks like that historic German cellar 3-pack offer was a complete bust. Some great reading on both Wine Berserkers and Cellartracker. https://www.cellartracker.com/forum/tm.asp?m=237654&mpage=1&key=
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Nov 25, 2012 08:13
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mikeh269 posted:You should try some more serious Beaujolais as well - a Moulin à Vent with a bit of bottle age is pretty delicious. There's an Monstrell-Shiraz from the Yecla/Alicante region I enjoy. It's obviously a monster of a wine, but really good for drinking alone. It's very chocolatedy and floral, which I love.
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Nov 25, 2012 12:18
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I had some Pinot Noir from Romania a while back (Murfatlar, 2007, Romanian Legacy or something like that) and it was amazing. And like 5 bucks a bottle. Does anyone else have experience with Romania wines and any suggestions? Cause I like what I've had so far.
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Nov 28, 2012 21:43
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Had a great night out at Terroir SF on Monday night - far too much wine for a Monday but a great experience nonetheless. If you're ever in sf I highly recommend it. Tonight I am drinking Blaufrankisch from Austria. Made by Weninger and from 08, it's light, a lot of cherry, raspberry, and a structured acidic backbone. Quite austere, and quite delicious. Another recommendation, for me, of strange grapes and strange regions.
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Nov 29, 2012 05:12
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Interesting. Blaufrankisch is known as Lemberger here in Washington state. One of the local wineries makes some so I'll have to try it out.
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Nov 29, 2012 06:52
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| # ? May 10, 2024 12:38 |
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It's a loving good grape. Like so many other great Eastern European varieties it gets overshadowed by the well known French and Italian grapes.
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Nov 29, 2012 07:10
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