3rd Annual Detroit Holiday Food Bazaar

Save the date for the 3rd Annual Detroit Holiday Food Bazaar.  The Gang of Pour will be there again this year selling its Orleans method fermented wine vinegars. This year’s Bazaar will be held in a very cool space, the Jam Handy in Detroit.  There will be many great indie food vendors and probably a [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gangofpour/uncZ/~3/jVoRyNsm46E/3rd-annual-detroit-holiday-food-bazaar

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New York Wine Retailers Dealing Aces Lately

I've noticed some enticing deals from wine retailers lately - especially from New York. Here's a few that caught my eye the past couple weeks:

Sokolin

Is it just me or do flash sale sites typically come out of the gates strong then fizzle? That may be the case, but it's all the more reason to jump on Last Call by Sokolin. Their first offer was impressive: 2006 Oreno for $39. Compare at around $110 in Massachusetts!

Empire Wine

I visited this place last year on our way to Michigan. I've never seen on operation quite like it. At noon on a Friday and they had 5 registers ringing people up as fast as they could and the line was still 20 people deep. Their latest Ship 4 Free deal is a nice one: The 2008 Betts & Scholl The O.G. Grenache for $17.95/btl with free shipping on 4.

Zachys

I'd heard of Zachys for years but never associated them with deep discounts. Until now. Have a look at this list of California Pinot Noirs before they're all gone. Littorai, Cobb, Black Kite, Radio-Coteau, Pisoni, Loring, etc. Quite the list. Free shipping on $100 or more. (thanks to my friend who sleuthed this from this deals thead on the CellarTracker forums and the original poster)

Grapes the Wine Co.

If you're not on Daniel Posner's email list you're missing out. He's always offering great deals but you've got to be on the list to hear about them. Sign up for his newsletter if you like wine deals.

And subscribe to The Wellesley Wine Press if you like hearing about wine deals.

Question of the Day: Where are you finding wine deals lately?


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WellesleyWinePress/~3/n_D6ddMwISU/new-york-wine-retailers-dealing-aces.html

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Shut the Front Door: A Vinsane, Pay-it-Forward, Drinks 4X the Price Wine Recommendation

The problem with sleuthing out good wine under $10 is the recommendations usually come with provisos like, “This is pretty good for the price,” or “This isn’t bad for the style of wine.”  Rare is the time that a wine recommendation for vino under $10 is just, “This is a fantastic wine.”

Who can blame the wine recommender for their caveats and written sleights of hand when they’re left to tout the middling amongst the insipid; the redemptive within the felonious?  It’s like the back-handed compliment from the parents of an axe murderer who note plaintively from the front stoop, “He has a good heart.”

Adding insult to this injury, it seems like nearly all domestic wines under $10 are manipulated to appeal to a demographic.  Far too often, they are oak chipped to a formula, softened, vortexed and plumped back up into a wine beverage complete with a label that screams, “Benignly vague and blandly appealing.  I am inoffensive to a large group of people.”

And, forget about pairing under $10 bottles of vino with food.  Do so only if your idea of wine pairing centers on condiments with artificial coloring and HFCS, so duotone are the wine flavor profiles.

image

When it comes to what should be reliable international value wines, forget about it – most of them aren’t even has-beens, they never were.  France and Italy – I’m talking to you.  For a sawbuck, these are sad, middling, barely potable wines evocative of an athlete whose entire identity is wrapped up in jockdom, but for whom life’s fate never provided him acclaim beyond the local playground. The fact that these wines often taste like a sweaty gym sock may, in fact, be no small coincidence.

Harrumph. 

What I want is what most wine consumers want: A non-spoofulated wine with quality that stands on its own—a good wine at $9.99 that is a good wine, period.  No half-hearted caveats associated with it.  If the wine pairs with dinner, instead of being a digestif, all the better.  Tie me up, spank me and call me Shirley if this mystical and elusive under $10 wine also has any of the following characteristics: Organic, old vines, unfiltered, native yeast, judicious oak, and complexity whilst being food-friendly.

I’m pretty sure I won’t have to have any dalliances in the wine S&M dungeon save for one emerging country.

Recently, I started to see glimpses of where quality, inexpensive wines might be coming from in the future when I tasted through a sampling of wines from the Navarra region of Spain. One $5 bottle of wine was so screamingly good it defied the law of reason. 

image

And, then, I received a recommendation for Masia de Bielsa’s 2009 Garnacha, a Spanish wine from the Campo de Borja area in the Aragon region of Spain, southeast of Navarre and La Rioja.  Adam Japko, a wino friend and author of Wine-Zag, and I did some horse-trading on bottles and he threw in a bottle of wine in a wine shipment to me and noted, “Curious what you think of this…”

What do I think?  I think I owe you favors to last a month of Sundays for turning me onto a beauty.

Of course, wine recommendations don’t happen in a vacuum and the Masia de Bielsa 2009 Garnacha is no different even if it follows a certain circuitous Internet-borne dynamic that seems unusual even in this day and age of “brand vs. land, there are no secret wine values anymore…” online battle.

Jose Pastor is a wunderkind (30 years old) wine importer with a fast growing reputation amongst wine insiders for his portfolio of Spanish wines that are typically natural in style – producers who farm organically when possible, emphasize terroir, use ambient yeasts, filter sparingly and use minimal oak.  In other words, his wines, and especially his inexpensive wine selections, are the anti-brand.  Or, should I say, “They’re the antidote to brand wines.”  The good stuff. 

image

Jose’s wines won’t have an end-cap in stores with promotional materials, nor will they follow you on Twitter or ply you with faux-flattery for a “Like” on Facebook. Ditto that for Pastor playing the points scoring game.  He doesn’t do it. The wines and wineries in his portfolio simply represent something good and honest and rely on smart trade buyers who know good juice when they taste it and are interested in paying that forward to consumer’s one bottle at a time.

This formula isn’t a recipe for getting rich, but it is a recipe for long-term, slow-burning growth based on a purity of vision.

When Richard Schnitzlein, a longtime wine buyer in the greater Boston area, took over the wine section at Ferns Country store in Carlisle, MA in early 2011, he started to remake the selection of wines on offer and that meant much more diversity, spreading the selection from two distributors to 14 over a seven month period.

A part of that remaking was to engage Genuine Wine Selections, a wine distributor in Massachusetts, who carries the Jose Pastor portfolio.

When Genuine Wine Selections partner Dennis Quinn showed up at Ferns in the spring with samples to taste, the ’09 Bielsa was a part of the mix.

Enamored, Schnitzlein started stocking the wine.  “Initially (the Bielsa) was a hand sell, but (it) soon became a wine that people were asking for,” he noted.

Japko was turned onto the Bielsa from Schnitzlein and mentioned the Bielsa on his site in June.  A September Ferns promotion dropped the price on the Bielsa from $11.99 to 9.95 and that yielded 15 cases of the Bielsa moving through the door for Ferns including a stock-up from Japko.

Within a week of receiving my bottle from Japko, I had taken to the Internet to find this wine and I bought a ½ case online from Marketview Liquor in New York state who sells it for $7.99 a bottle.

I’ve gifted a bottle to a friend at work, and, well, I’m writing extensively about this vino, too – my own pay-it-forward juju for having been tipped off to this wine.

The moral of this story?  Finding a gem of a wine for $10 or under isn’t a hopeless process, but you do have to sift a lot of muck to find the gold nugget.  In my opinion, you’re more likely to find a gem by keeping your ears open for word of mouth recommendations from wine-inclined friends or a local wine shop then to take to the wine aisles of your supermarket wine section playing brand roulette.  Here, the internet and Wine-searcher.com is your friend, as well.  In addition, Spain is a country that is producing some excellent wines across all price tiers, and my very recent and very anecdotal track record at the lower-end has been very good.  And, finally, it pays to know people.  It pays to know what Jose Pastor is all about, and it pays to know the Richard Schnitzlein’s and Adam Japko’s of the world who freely share where to find the good stuff, even if finding the good stuff requires an Importer in California, a wine buyer in Massachusetts, a generous friend and internet ecommerce.

2009 Bielsa Vinas Viejas Garnacha

Huge, pure nose with mulberry juice, black cherry, orange peel, earth and a meaty savory quality that gives way to an expressive palate with plum, black cherry, spice and fresh squeezed orange juice.  The finish lingers with plum, pepper and earthiness.  This is a varietally correct, gorgeous, natural, unfiltered wine that screams for food and would be a bargain at 4X the price.  Highly recommended.  At under $10 a bottle, you’d be foolhardy not to find this wine.

Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/shut_the_front_door_a_vinsane_pay-it-forward_drinks_4x_the_price_wine_recom/

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WBW 76: Barossa Boomerang

Not too long ago I drank quite a bit of Australian wine, particularly Shiraz. Given that this grape, also known as Syrah, expresses greatness in the Barossa Valley I could not pass an opportunity to revisit this region for this months’ Wine Blogging Wednesday. Our host, Adam from Wine Zag, proposed we look for any [...]

WBW 76: Barossa Boomerang originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Winecast/~3/FS8LnHLmfVk/

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7 Reliably Outstanding Fruit-Forward California Pinot Noir Producers

It's no secret California Pinot Noir consumption has taken center stage here at The Wellesley Wine Press lately. But all of this research has to lead to something, right?

I thought it would be interesting to share a list of producers, mostly ones I'd consider to be at least somewhat fruit-forward stylistically, who when I open a bottle of their wines I have full confidence the wine is going to be outstanding.

Here are 7 reliably outstanding California Pinot Noir producers I've discovered:

Kosta Browne

A benchmark, bold, fruit-forward producer. Their appellation wines (Russian River, Sonoma Coast and recently added Santa Lucia Highlands) go for $58 and their single vineyard wines fetch $78. After a string of favorable ratings, their 2009 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir was named Wine Spectator's Wine of the Year. Rarely seen at retail, this one is mostly mailing list only with some availability in restaurants. A tough mailing list to crack but get on it and have patience. It's worth it. Sign up at http://kostabrowne.com

Sojourn

Some of their wines are rightfully described as "a Cab drinker's Pinot Noir" (Ridgetop, Gap's Crown) but others let the site speak beautifully for itself (Rodgers, Alder Springs). Their appellation wines sell for $39-$42 and they're fantastic. Their single vineyards go for $48-$59. One of the most favorable mailing lists on the planet. Sign up now at http://sojourncellars.com

Radio-Coteau

Gorgeous stuff that shows diversity from vineyard to vineyard. La Neblina and the newly-introduced Laguna are my favorites, Alberigi is leaner in style. You'll see some availability retail but rarely at a price better than what's available winery direct. That these spectacular wines are available in the high $40s is an example of why California Pinot Noir is one of the most exciting categories in wine today.

Dehlinger

Three years ago I'd never heard of Dehlinger. But after a friend introduced me to their wines and I've had a chance to try a number of their bottles and I've been blown away. An old school Pinot Noir producer, they show strength across a number of varieties. Prices are extremely reasonably considering the quality. Their Pinots sell for between $45 and $60. http://dehlingerwinery.com

Sea Smoke

They ruffled some feathers when they labeled their 2009s "Grand Cru", but they're undeniably one of the finest California Pinot Noir producers. There's quite a price gap between their Southing bottling (around $50) and the $100+ "Ten". I say go for the Southing. It ages nicely and can exhibit gorgeous earthy characteristics with just a bit of age. Their 2004 Southing was my wine of the year. Sea Smoke is always a nice bottle to break out for a special occasion. http://seasmoke.com

Belle Glos

Their appelation "Meiomi" bottling ($22 release and available for less at retail if you look around) provides a beautiful window into what they do with their single vineyard bottlings. Las Alturas and Taylor Lane are my favorites for their cherry pipe tobacco notes and polished, effortless richness. Beautifully packaged in wax dipped bottles with scripted lettering, these wines are a great value at $44. And even better when you find them for less at select retailers. So reliably delicious. Search for these at retail on Wine-Searcher.com

Black Kite

A relatively new producer from the Anderson Valley, Black Kite's Kite's Rest bottling has impressed me across a number of vintages. I tasted the 2008 blind against alongside a couple of nice Burgundies and thought to myself: "Now this is what Pinot Noir should taste like". What can I say - I love California Pinot Noir. I usually try to catch this one at specialty retailers due to tough shipping terms winery direct to the Northeast.

Question of the Day: Who did I miss? Who are the California Pinot Noir producers who, when you open a bottle, you're fairly certain it's going to be an outstanding, fruit-forward, enjoyable bottle?

Check back soon for a similar list of leaner, more terroir-driven producers. I'd love it if you subscribed to The Wellesley Wine Press to get new posts sent to your inbox.


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WellesleyWinePress/~3/jQ-EKvkKd9E/7-reliably-outstanding-fruit-forward.html

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Michael Mondavi really gets wine blogging

While searching for something else this week I came across this random video of an Italian blogger who did a short video interview with Michael Mondavi. Mr. Mondavi’s answer to a simple question about wine bloggers shows he really gets how we fit into the wine conversation. The best part is the last 10 seconds [...]

Michael Mondavi really gets wine blogging originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Winecast/~3/b6jgbhuqev0/

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Shut the Front Door: A Vinsane, Pay-it-Forward, Drinks 4X the Price Wine Recommendation

The problem with sleuthing out good wine under $10 is the recommendations usually come with provisos like, “This is pretty good for the price,” or “This isn’t bad for the style of wine.”  Rare is the time that a wine recommendation for vino under $10 is just, “This is a fantastic wine.”

Who can blame the wine recommender for their caveats and written sleights of hand when they’re left to tout the middling amongst the insipid; the redemptive within the felonious?  It’s like the back-handed compliment from the parents of an axe murderer who note plaintively from the front stoop, “He has a good heart.”

Adding insult to this injury, it seems like nearly all domestic wines under $10 are manipulated to appeal to a demographic.  Far too often, they are oak chipped to a formula, softened, vortexed and plumped back up into a wine beverage complete with a label that screams, “Benignly vague and blandly appealing.  I am inoffensive to a large group of people.”

And, forget about pairing under $10 bottles of vino with food.  Do so only if your idea of wine pairing centers on condiments with artificial coloring and HFCS, so duotone are the wine flavor profiles.

image

When it comes to what should be reliable international value wines, forget about it – most of them aren’t even has-beens, they never were.  France and Italy – I’m talking to you.  For a sawbuck, these are sad, middling, barely potable wines evocative of an athlete whose entire identity is wrapped up in jockdom, but for whom life’s fate never provided him acclaim beyond the local playground. The fact that these wines often taste like a sweaty gym sock may, in fact, be no small coincidence.

Harrumph. 

What I want is what most wine consumers want: A non-spoofulated wine with quality that stands on its own—a good wine at $9.99 that is a good wine, period.  No half-hearted caveats associated with it.  If the wine pairs with dinner, instead of being a digestif, all the better.  Tie me up, spank me and call me Shirley if this mystical and elusive under $10 wine also has any of the following characteristics: Organic, old vines, unfiltered, native yeast, judicious oak, and complexity whilst being food-friendly.

I’m pretty sure I won’t have to have any dalliances in the wine S&M dungeon save for one emerging country.

Recently, I started to see glimpses of where quality, inexpensive wines might be coming from in the future when I tasted through a sampling of wines from the Navarra region of Spain. One $5 bottle of wine was so screamingly good it defied the law of reason. 

image

And, then, I received a recommendation for Masia de Bielsa’s 2009 Garnacha, a Spanish wine from the Campo de Borja area in the Aragon region of Spain, southeast of Navarre and La Rioja.  Adam Japko, a wino friend and author of Wine-Zag, and I did some horse-trading on bottles and he threw in a bottle of wine in a wine shipment to me and noted, “Curious what you think of this…”

What do I think?  I think I owe you favors to last a month of Sundays for turning me onto a beauty.

Of course, wine recommendations don’t happen in a vacuum and the Masia de Bielsa 2009 Garnacha is no different even if it follows a certain circuitous Internet-borne dynamic that seems unusual even in this day and age of “brand vs. land, there are no secret wine values anymore…” online battle.

Jose Pastor is a wunderkind (30 years old) wine importer with a fast growing reputation amongst wine insiders for his portfolio of Spanish wines that are typically natural in style – producers who farm organically when possible, emphasize terroir, use ambient yeasts, filter sparingly and use minimal oak.  In other words, his wines, and especially his inexpensive wine selections, are the anti-brand.  Or, should I say, “They’re the antidote to brand wines.”  The good stuff. 

image

Jose’s wines won’t have an end-cap in stores with promotional materials, nor will they follow you on Twitter or ply you with faux-flattery for a “Like” on Facebook. Ditto that for Pastor playing the points scoring game.  He doesn’t do it. The wines and wineries in his portfolio simply represent something good and honest and rely on smart trade buyers who know good juice when they taste it and are interested in paying that forward to consumer’s one bottle at a time.

This formula isn’t a recipe for getting rich, but it is a recipe for long-term, slow-burning growth based on a purity of vision.

When Richard Schnitzlein, a longtime wine buyer in the greater Boston area, took over the wine section at Ferns Country store in Carlisle, MA in early 2011, he started to remake the selection of wines on offer and that meant much more diversity, spreading the selection from two distributors to 14 over a seven month period.

A part of that remaking was to engage Genuine Wine Selections, a wine distributor in Massachusetts, who carries the Jose Pastor portfolio.

When Genuine Wine Selections partner Dennis Quinn showed up at Ferns in the spring with samples to taste, the ’09 Bielsa was a part of the mix.

Enamored, Schnitzlein started stocking the wine.  “Initially (the Bielsa) was a hand sell, but (it) soon became a wine that people were asking for,” he noted.

Japko was turned onto the Bielsa from Schnitzlein and mentioned the Bielsa on his site in June.  A September Ferns promotion dropped the price on the Bielsa from $11.99 to 9.95 and that yielded 15 cases of the Bielsa moving through the door for Ferns including a stock-up from Japko.

Within a week of receiving my bottle from Japko, I had taken to the Internet to find this wine and I bought a ½ case online from Marketview Liquor in New York state who sells it for $7.99 a bottle.

I’ve gifted a bottle to a friend at work, and, well, I’m writing extensively about this vino, too – my own pay-it-forward juju for having been tipped off to this wine.

The moral of this story?  Finding a gem of a wine for $10 or under isn’t a hopeless process, but you do have to sift a lot of muck to find the gold nugget.  In my opinion, you’re more likely to find a gem by keeping your ears open for word of mouth recommendations from wine-inclined friends or a local wine shop then to take to the wine aisles of your supermarket wine section playing brand roulette.  Here, the internet and Wine-searcher.com is your friend, as well.  In addition, Spain is a country that is producing some excellent wines across all price tiers, and my very recent and very anecdotal track record at the lower-end has been very good.  And, finally, it pays to know people.  It pays to know what Jose Pastor is all about, and it pays to know the Richard Schnitzlein’s and Adam Japko’s of the world who freely share where to find the good stuff, even if finding the good stuff requires an Importer in California, a wine buyer in Massachusetts, a generous friend and internet ecommerce.

2009 Bielsa Vinas Viejas Garnacha

Huge, pure nose with mulberry juice, black cherry, orange peel, earth and a meaty savory quality that gives way to an expressive palate with plum, black cherry, spice and fresh squeezed orange juice.  The finish lingers with plum, pepper and earthiness.  This is a varietally correct, gorgeous, natural, unfiltered wine that screams for food and would be a bargain at 4X the price.  Highly recommended.  At under $10 a bottle, you’d be foolhardy not to find this wine.

Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/shut_the_front_door_a_vinsane_pay-it-forward_drinks_4x_the_price_wine_recom/

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Viognier Theme for WBW78

Nice theme for summer. Join us June 20th. Source: WordPress Via: Drink What You Like I?m delighted to announce that I am hosting Wine Blogging Wednesday #78 on Wednesday, June 20th. WBW78 will mark my second time hosting this monthly virtual wine event. Our theme for this month will be a grape that is near [...]

Viognier Theme for WBW78 originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Winecast/~3/SaN6i1INvI8/

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