Wine and Providing a Glaring Glimpse of the Obvious

The UK's Daily Telegraph reports on a study that delivers the astounding conclusion that folks often drink to relieve stress. This revelation might be best filed in the "Tell Me Something I Don't Know" category. Conducted by "DrinkAware", a UK-based...

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A Wine for Tonight: 2010 Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling

Would you like a quick suggestion for a good wine to drink tonight (or this weekend) that won?t break your budget and is widely available? Many of our readers have said this is something they would like, so here is this week?s selection, the 2010 Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling from the Columbia Valley in Washington [...]

A Wine for Tonight: 2010 Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling was originally posted on Wine Peeps. Wine Peeps - Your link to great QPR wines from Washington State and beyond.

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Value Alert: 2009 Balletto Russian River Valley Pinot Noir

The road to discovering new wine producers can take many directions. I usually have at least a dozen wines on my mental shopping list - a combination of recommendations from friends on Twitter, things I've read on blogs, tips from friends in real life, offers from retailers, and favorable ratings from wine publications. It typically takes months for me to hear a recommendation, seek a wine out, procure it, taste it, and write something up about. But I recently discovered a wine and completed the whole cycle in just a week.

To kick off Restaurant Week Boston we visited Sorellina. It was our first time there and I thought it was fantastic: Elegant & serene but with a lively atmosphere. Impeccable service. Outstanding food. 4.5/5 stars. Enjoyed it very much.

That said, the mark-up on the wine was pretty aggressive. The table next to us ordered a $140 bottle of Groth Cabernet that's readily available at retail for $39.99. I think I've even seen it for $34.99. $210 for a bottle of '07 Orenellia...too bad it was a half bottle.

But restaurants almost always use wine as a profit center - nothing new there. I chose to go the by-the-glass route. I probably should have gone with something from Italy (Sorelina is a modern Italian restaurant) but I just wanted to enjoy some wine with whatever I might order. I went for a glass of 2009 Balletto Pinot Noir for $14.

In the context of the tranquil environment, beautiful stemware, and ideal serving temperature I thoroughly enjoyed the wine. I took note of the producer and thought to check whether I could track it down at retail. I did a search on Wine-Searcher.com (the gold standard for finding wine online) and it turned up a retailer who said they had it for less than $20. That's the good news.

The bad news it was only available at Select Liquors - a retailer I've had bad luck with. I've tried ordering wines from them at least a couple other times and they've never fulfilled for one reason or another. However, after a couple days I received an email saying my wine was ready for pick-up.

Select Liquors is situated within Bazaar on Cambridge - a funky but evidently well-regarded (according to Yelp reviews) Russian grocery in Allston. I had a hard time finding someone who spoke English to direct me to where I could get my wine. I showed my ID at the register and that was that. I got my 2 bottles of Balletto and I was on my way.

Drinking it later that night during family pizza night (Old School this week for those keeping score) something occurred to me. The atmosphere in which I tasted the wine the first time couldn't have been much more different. And I have to say - although it was still outstanding the second time I did like it more the first.

In many ways a bottle of wine is a commodity. The effort that goes into preparing it in a restaurant pales in comparison to the Lobster Gnocchi we had at Sorelina (which was amazing by the way). But when you factor in the overall experience and the resulting discovery of great wines that can occur it's a bit easier to swallow the high markups we see in restaurants.

2009 Balletto Vineyards Russian River Valley Pinot Noir
13.9% Alcohol
4,004 Cases Produced
Release Price: $24

Rich but not overripe. Black cherry and cola notes. A little rough around the edges (mildly astringent, which may improve with time) but there's so much right here it's hard not to love. Really nice wine.

90/100 WWP: Outstanding

Winery Website
CellarTracker
Wine-Searcher

Question of the Day: 
What's your strategy for dealing with overpriced wine in restaurants?


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How To Pronounce Willamette

One of the dangers of being a wine podcaster is you have to say wine terms and regions out loud. It’s hard enough to keep everything spelled correctly and often over the years I’ve made some embarrassing mistakes on the podcast. But the one that is probably most distressing for me was my butchering of [...]

How To Pronounce Willamette originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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Auction of Washington Wines: Another Smashing Success

This past weekend, the Washington wine industry hosted its 24th annual Auction of Washington Wines. The Auction has raised more than $24 million since its inception in 1988 to benefit the uncompensated care program at Seattle Children?s Hospital and since 2001, the Washington Wine Education Foundation, funding viticultural and enological research across the state. This [...]

Auction of Washington Wines: Another Smashing Success was originally posted on Wine Peeps. Wine Peeps - Your link to great QPR wines from Washington State and beyond.

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Value Alert: 2007 Ruffino Modus

Italian wine - Buy 6 or more bottles and get 50% off shipping with code "grape70"

A couple weeks ago we were discussing a $25 wine Spectator rated 97 points - the 2009 Carlisle Sonoma County Syrah. After appearing in a Wine Spectator Insider email, the wine evaporated from the market as quickly as any I've ever seen. Sometimes it's like that - where a rating comes out of nowhere and the wine has been on the market for a while. Other times the rating has been around for a long time before the wine comes to market. That's been the case with the 2007 Ruffino Modus Toscana.
The $35 Modus received a 96 point rating back in the fall of 2010. There was considerable speculation it might become Wine Spectator's Wine of the Year. (Interesting side note on our Scoop the Spectator contest - the winner recently had a piece of writing published by the magazine - very cool!). The metrics were all there - especially the production level. 7,000 cases of the wine were imported to the US.

The wine ended up with a respectable showing finishing in the Top 25. When a wine has favorable QPR metrics but then ends up not making their Top 100 list it makes me think it didn't show very well when tasted across a wider audience. I liked the 2007 BV Tapestry (93WS/$50) and thought for sure it would make the Top 10. No such luck - it didn't make the Top 100.

The point chasing wine deal hound market hasn't received the 2007 Modus with the kind of enthusiasm the Carlisle garnered. I have a few theories why:

  • The 96 point rating the Modus received kind of came out of nowhere. They've been making the wine since 1997 and the best Spectator rating a prior vintage received was 91. It makes one wonder whether the bottle Suckling tasted got lucky.
  • Speaking of Suckling the rating come out right around the time he was leaving the publication to start his own thing. There was also some conjecture Spectator wouldn't feature the wine favorably to bring attention to a wine he rated.
  • No other major publication rated the wine as highly as Spectator - if they rated it at all. This lack of a second rating reinforced the concerns Spectator's 96 was a fluke. By the way, if the idea of having 2 or more major publications favorably rate a wine appeals to you check out the Wine Blue Book.
  • The wine wasn't on the market when the rating dropped. After a while I kind of forgot about it and I think other deal hounds did too.
  • The Modus is a much higher production wine. Scarcity makes people go a little nutso sometimes and what's more readily available is less precious. Perhaps there's just as much demand for the Modus but there's less supply for the Carlisle so the Carlisle is the hotter wine.
Perhaps there was some intentional delay on the part of the distributor in Massachusetts to sell through the 2006 vintage before releasing the 2007? Of course that didn't stop Costco from trying to leverage the 96 point rating for the 2006 in the mean time. I enjoy shopping at Costco but beware of their shelf talkers - they can get rather shady with them. The rating was crossed out in this shelf talker but the tasting notes were still for the 2007 while Costco has been selling the 2006 the past few months:


A couple weeks ago I tried the 2007 for the first time at the Wine Spectator Grand Tour stop in Boston. I thought it was quite nice but the context of 200 other wines it was hard to say for sure what it would really be like to drink a glass with a meal.

I got a chance to do just that La Famiglia Giorgio in the North End last week. We were in a bit of a hurry so table-top signage was effective in making our decision:


They poured each bottle through an aerating funnel into a decanter. Pretty nice treatment for what the waiter called one of the more expensive bottles. $46 at a restaurant is a very nice price point. And I thought the wine was great.

The wine is 50% Sangiovese, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 25% Merlot. Ruffino positions Modus as "modern interpretations of historical territory". I'll go along with that. Tons of fruit. Not austere at all. Some acidity. Nicely balanced. Call it 90-93 points?

I spotted the 2007 Modus for the first time at Costco in Waltham, MA yesterday. $22.89 (and no tax in MA). There were only 6 bottles in the bin and the cashier said they didn't have any backup:

Update: As 10:00 am Saturday morning Waltham is out of Modus. I hear they have 100 bottles in Danvers.


If you're in the area and interested in buying some it might be worth giving them a call or stopping in. If not there are plenty of retailers in the country that have it for a little more.

Strictly from a numbers perspective - 96 points for a Tuscan red you can buy for $25 vs. 97 points for a California Syrah that's nearly impossible to find at this point makes this Modus a no brainer for the point chaser. And all kidding aside I think it's a really nice wine for around $25.

Related Links:
CellarTracker
Wine-Searcher

Question of the Day: Why do you think the market reacted so differently to the 2007 Modus compared to the 2009 Carlisle?


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Another Wine.com Deal: $30 for $60

I remember the first time I saw a young mom with a shopping cart full of wine at the liquor store. This was before we had kids and it seemed a little strange to me at the time. Now that we have kids it makes perfect sense.

Zulily - who offers "Daily Deals for Moms, Babies, and Kids" is offering this deal:
$30 for $60 from Wine.com

Sale ends 6/20 at 6am pdt

Keep in mind - as with previous Wine.com vouchers offered by group buying/deal sites the voucher cannot be used towards shipping. The first bottle usually costs around $12 to ship which diminishes the 50% off nature of the offer. But it's still a good deal I think - even with Wine.com's often higher-than-average prices. Especially if you've signed up for their Steward Ship shipping program. 

Happy Father's Day!

PS The $35 for $70 from Eversave is active through the end of the day on Father's Day. Check that one out too if you missed it the first time around.

Oh wait - here's another one $35 for $70 from Plum District. My goodness - how many deals can they run? Expired.


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