Category Archives: Gruner Veltliner

Weekend wine list — experts’ picks: From crisp Viognier to Veltliner

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Comparing the picks: A survey of recent selections from top wine experts. Whenever there’s an option, I highlight the more-affordable wines, focusing on possible choices for weekend purchases. Check their websites for full descriptions and other picks:

2006 Anakena Single Vineyard Viognier Rapel Valley, Chile:
Natalie MacLean — “crisp, well-balanced Viognier,” her best value white. $15.95

2005 Jekel Pinot Noir, Monterey County, Calif.:
Jerry Shriver — “beautiful, soft and light sipper,” not to mention: “Love, love, love this price.” $15

Casa Silva 2005 Carmenère Los Lingues Estate:
Robert Parker — “superb aromatic array” with lots of structure. $7

Domäne Wachau (Freie Weingärtner) ‘Terrassen; Federspiel’ 2006 (Wachau):
Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher — “simply couldn’t believe” the price for for this “fascinating and fine” Austrian Grüner Veltliner. $11.99

2006 J Pinot Gris (J Vineyards and Winery in the Russian River Valley of California’s Sonoma County):
Edward Deitch — “lush and beautiful,” with notes of pear, white peach and strawberry. $20

Gruet Brut NV New Mexico:
Jancis Robinson — “refreshingly zesty and dry,” tastes as though it should cost at least twice its price. $13-$15

2006 Cono Sur Casablanca Valley Sauvignon Blanc:
Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg — “a perfect match of soft, creamy flavors, making it difficult to tell where the oyster ends and the wine begins.” $12

2004 Benziger Family Winery Sonoma County Merlot:
Olivia Wu — “easy to like and easy to drink … it hits all the right Merlot notes” $19

Nothing tempting? Or maybe just not available at the local wine shop? Try browsing the latest wine reports from this custom collection of hundreds of news websites — filtered for bargains, continuously updated, and quick and easy to scan:

  • Reds (from Beaujolais to Zinfandel)
  • Whites (from Chablis to Sauvignon Blanc).

To hit closer to home, try WNR’s Advanced Wine Search tool and see what wine finds local columnists and wine experts may be writing about in your area. Once there, just type in your city and state (within quotation marks, as in, “Napa, California”), to get results ranked by relevance.

Or dig into some perennial standbys at SFGate.com’s Top 100 Wines of 2006, the Top 100 of 2006 list (PDF download) from Wine Spectator and the list of 50 Wines You Can Always Trust from Food & Wine.

Attracted to a bottle that’s advertised in the local paper or sitting on the local wine store shelf?

Do a little background research with Wine Enthusiast’s free, searchable Wine Buying Guide—either with a specific name or by types and price. For a little extra info, try Robert Parker’s handy Vintage Chart. Or see what the online wine community says about it with the search tools at cork’d, snooth or Wine Log.

Once you’ve selected the wine, you naturally want to decide what to eat with it. For some savvy guidance, try Natalie MacLean’s Wine & Food Matcher, which boasts a database of 360,000 wine-food pairings.

The Web is about community. So take a moment to comment about your experience with a particular wine — to help steer others to or away from it. And of course, have a great weekend!

Wine: Win some, lose some

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Out to dinner with some friends, I was paid a high compliment. They allowed me to choose the wine, well aware of the fledgling wine blogger in their midst.

I, too, was well aware—well aware that this was a tough crowd.

'06 Loimer Lois Gruner VeltlinerBut I confidentially picked up the wine list, fairly certain that I could find something decent at this upscale seafood restaurant to accompany our selections of soft-shell crab, salmon and halibut.

My confidence was rewarded when my eyes alighted on none other than an ’06 Loimer “Lois” Gruner Veltliner, Kamptal.

Alert readers will recall that I wrote about Gruner Veltliners in a previous post—about how the Austrian whites have become the “darlings” of Manhattan’s best restaurants lately, about how they’re like drinking “liquid crystal.”

So I ordered it, preening, content that my research for this blog was proving useful not just in cyberspace but in a high-stakes real-world setting, too.

When the chilled bottle arrived, I tasted. Slam dunk! Zesty and incredibly dry, with an earthy mineral touch.

I turned to the companion on my left and was greeted with a broad smile, as he put down the glass to take out a pen and jot down the name for a future purchase.

Serenely, I turned to the right.

“Tinny,” this one said.

Huh?

“Tinny,” he repeated.

This particular friend and I will argue about almost anything, at any time, at the drop of a hat. We sort of enjoy it. But I knew there was no use in trying to convince him otherwise about the wine. What for me was a touch of mineral, for him was tin.

(Frankly, there was little strategic value in arguing because the friend across from me agreed with him.)

Duke Ellington once famously said about music: “If it sounds good, it is good.”

The same could be said about wine—if it tastes good, it is good. And the converse is equally true.

Or as Jancis Robinson says in her book How to Taste:

“Despite what some self-styled ‘connoisseurs’ may suggest, there are no rights or wrongs in wine appreciation. Tasting is in its essence a subjective business. There are some bottles which may, on an objective basis, be technically faulty, but which some tasters may find perfectly enjoyable. There are other famous wines that can count on enough admirers always to command a high price—that most quantifiable of wine measurements—yet they may not appeal at all to all wine drinkers. Never feel that you ‘ought’ to like or dislike a wine. The most important aspect of any wine is that you enjoy it.”

Fortunately, I was given a second chance. This time, deciding on a safe bet, I ordered the Willamette Valley Vineyards 2005 Pinot Noir from Oregon. Smooth and balanced, fruity and dry, like drinking liquid ruby, so to speak.

I looked around and instantly saw that I was redeemed, that I might even be allowed to order wine again at our next night out.

 

Intrepid wine blogger goes to ‘school’

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Total Wine Tasting TableWriting a wine blog, of course, requires drinking wine. Not necessarily in large quantities, but enough to learn more and more about the varieties that different wine-growing regions produce, their distinguishing features, and how to enhance your enjoyment of them.

Saturdays have now become a school day for me, thanks to the local Total Wine & More shop, part of a group of wine superstores in seven states that boast about 8,000 types of wines on their shelves. I visited the one near me for a public “Tasting Table” to try some of them out.

I’m picturing this as a kind of virtual university, if they keep letting me back. And the best part is there’s no tuition and no pre-enrollment exam. Believe it or not, you merely have to walk through the door to be treated to a half-dozen or more free selections, a refreshing oasis away from the weekend lawn-mowing, shopping, cleaning, etc., even though it’s only a couple small swallows per selection.

Each week features a different theme. This time it was German and Austrian picks, which appeared to be hits with the several customers of various ages who formed a very convivial sort of classroom around the wine table.

My favorite was the Winzer Krems Gruner Veltliner, (2005; $13.99) a highly popular Austrian white with a citrus-laced freshness that’s surprisingly dry if you’re expecting a Riesling kind of response. Makes you think about cooking up a Wiener schnitzel just for the occasion.

As a bonus, not only are the drinks free but so, too, is a 443-page store-branded “Guide to Wine” that helps you dig into the background of the bottles you like.

You learn, for example, that Austrian whites have become the “darlings” of Manhattan’s best restaurants lately, converting loyal Chardonnay drinkers with their bracing elegance and intoxicating finishes.

And then you find this description that seems to have been the notes from a mind-reading session about what you just drank: “Big but never heavy, forceful but not overbearing, they are like drinking liquid crystal.”

The guide helps your appreciation further with a section on Enhancing Your Enjoyment, offering some down-to-earth guidelines to judge a wine through such factors as color, aroma and flavor intensity. And it’s clearly aimed at non-snobs, as illustrated by this tidbit:

“The prevailing myth that one must dedicate his or her life to ardent study of wine prior to being allowed an opinion on matters of taste and evaluation of wines is simply not true. It is not necessary to spend years in a dank cellar, hunched over vintage charts, studying the fermentation process by candlelight while possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of every wine producer in the world in order to participate in a conversation about wine.”

Amen.

Regrettably, the guidebook doesn’t appear to be available on the Total Wine website. (I’d link to it if it were.)

But as the spirit of that book would proclaim, you don’t have to be an expert, or a blogger, for that matter, to take advantage of wine tastings, even if there’s no superstore nearby. Many more-modest wine shops welcome in patrons for samplings.

John Adlum ChardonnayDuring a recent vacation in Chincoteague, VA, that I blogged in a previous article, I dropped by the mom-and-popish Wine Cheese and More shop for a tasting hosted by the Williamsburg Winery (you may be pleasantly greeted with some classical music if you click on the site).

Four wines were featured there, with my pet being the John Adlum Chardonnay (2005; $13.99). It had a clean, pleasant hint of grapefruit and a feel of French oak in the finish, though I had a hard time sensing the touch of hay that the store’s proprietor detected. Wine Spectator, reviewing the 2004 vintage, gave it an 86 rating and called it, “Clean, with modest toast giving way to fresh apple and melon hints. Nice, crisp finish.”

Check out the usual directories or local newspapers to find a wine shop near you that throws tastings. Or try out my own Google-powered map, designed expressly to help locate neighborhood wine bars and shops anywhere in the country.

My other homegrown tool, what I call All-In-One Wine Search, serves up the latest reports about wine bars and tastings from leading news sites and blogs. You can also type “festival” in the search box, along with your location, to scope out possible wine festivals in your area.

And remember, non-experts are more than welcomed at these things. Hey, this is only my second posting and I already feel like a grad student.