Category Archives: Tastings

Eight good reasons to attend a wine tasting — jewels of Central Italy

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Combine worse-than-expected after-work traffic, a cold drizzle and a broken umbrella. The unmistakable ingredients for a pretty miserable evening, right?

Wrong — not so miserable at all if once you arrive at your destination you’re greeted by a forest of wine glasses on top of pressed white tablecloths and cheery servers starting to pour — you guessed it — wine!

Welcome to a “Central Italy Wine Tasting,” I thought to myself on that dark and rainy night last week, glad that I wasn’t too late to miss any of the eight featured selections, gladder still after sitting down and immediately being served a 2005 Monte Schiavo Verdicchio Classico ($14.85). Delicately light and refreshingly fruity — the broken umbrella became but a distant memory.

The Verdicchio was soon followed by a 2006 Podere Canneta Vernaccia di San Gimignano ($13.99), just as fresh and clean as the one before it but laced with a surprising crispness. By this time, all of us at the table had made our introductions, as we began settling into a certain zone of contentment with smiles and nods all around.

Meanwhile, the host of this sparkling event, Laurent Guinand of GiraMondo Wine Adventures, a member of the Society of Wine Educators, was helping us interpret the varied aromas and tastes, and dispensing insights about the different terrains that conceived them. His cordially informative presentation alone would have been worth driving some distance in that crummy traffic and weather.

For wine lovers, the central area of Italy is a fabled land, spanning the regions of the Marche, Umbria, Lazio and, of course, Tuscany.

Charming towns, Roman ruins, cypress-dotted hillsides, ancient castles — producing, among other jewels:

  • 2005 La Villetta Frascati Superiore ($14.85) — light, dry and balanced.
  • 2005 Villa Puccini Chianti Riserva ($19) — an “excellent” Chianti, according to my notes, ruby-colored and dry but not biting.
  • 2003 Vignabaldo Rosso di Torgiano ($9.99) — darker and more earthy than the Villa Puccini, “rustic,” as Laurent put it.
  • 2004 Le Volte Tenuta dell’Ornellaia ($30) — I found it “lively,” the label called it “vivacious” — a mixture of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Super Tuscan that seemed to leave everyone pleased.
  • 2000 Lamole di Lamole Vin Santo del Chianti Classico ($22) — a very good year, Laurent noted, making for a very pleasant dessert wine.
  • And last but definitely not least, a 1998 Rienzi Brunello di Montalcino ($65) — my personal favorite, with its layers of fruit and spice revealing, as Laurent suggested, what’s meant by the term complexity.

All in all, eight good reasons to attend a wine tasting.

 

Don’t get flustered about what wine to choose — get smarter instead

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It’s only natural to get a little flustered when a waiter hands you an impenetrable wine list. Or when your mind goes blank trying to decide what to pick up at the local wine shop, the one that mostly seems to carry bottles you’ve never heard of.

But becoming smarter about wine — figuring out what you really like and, perhaps more important, what you should plunk down good money to buy — that’s not as hard as it might seem.

Take it from Michael Franz, editor of the excellent Wine Review Online.

“You can learn a lot in a hurry,” Franz told a gathering of wine enthusiasts at a recent tasting event hosted by the Washington Wine Academy.

Wine democracy

Franz is one of those experts helping to promote a democratization of the wine scene with a philosophy that essentially says your own palate is the best judge of what tastes nice and what doesn’t.

The trick is learning to tell the difference between various styles and brands. And that, Franz said, comes down to just a few basic questions: What’s the grape variety, where was it grown and how was it made at the winery?

Much of that kind of information can be absorbed by doing a little homework. One place to start is the Wine 101 tab of the Professional Friends of Wine website. Focusing on some 80 selections that are of most interest to U.S. consumers, the listings not only tell you what aromas and flavors to look for in a grape variety but also how and where it’s grown.

Nothing beats sipping

Reading about wine is all well and good. But nothing beats actually doing some sipping at an organized wine tasting, where you’re likely to be more attentive and analytical about what you’re imbibing. Other advantages include having a large collection of types to test all at once, being able to compare tasting notes with others and getting encouragement from an experienced group leader.

Case in point is the Washington Wine Academy’s two-part “ABC’s of Wine” program. Each delicious part featured four pairs of different wines (not to mention a glass of chilled bubbly on your way into the conference room to shake off the workaday cobwebs).

Guiding us through the tastings with steady humor as well as expertise, Franz would point out, for example, how geography and climate can lead to some not-so-subtle differences that we might notice among wines made from the same grape variety.

Don’t despair

“But if you get them all wrong, it does not mean you should go back to beer!” Franz declared to a round of friendly laughter in advance of a blind tasting. The odds get better with practice, he assured us.

To find a place to “practice” near you, check out LocalWineEvents.com and Wine Events Calendar.

Or try out the Advanced Wine Search tool on the upper right of this page: Just type your city and state (e.g., Napa, California) in the text box, hit the Search button and then click on the “Tastings” link just above the initial results.

Trust me, you’ll feel much better next time you face a snooty wine list or find yourself roaming alone around wine shelves.

For some camaraderie with that salmon, head to a local wine bar

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Wine is good. Wine with food is even better. And the best place to enjoy both may not be the usual restaurant setting but your local wine bar.

Case in point: the Idylwood Grill and Wine Bar, tucked away in a suburban Washington, D.C., strip mall that gives a newcomer little hint of the feast that awaits inside.

Hedi Ben-Abdallah toasts patrons at his Idylwood Grill and Wine Bar. By Denny Gainer
Hedi Ben-Abdallah toasts patrons at his Idylwood Grill and Wine Bar.
Photo by Denny Gainer

A few friends and I recently paid a visit there to sample the wines (the list offers 108 choices, many by the glass) and discovered a gem of a place where fine food, delicious wines and camaraderie embrace. 

If you have the impression that food might just be an afterthought at an eatery that bills itself as a wine bar, you’ve obviously never tasted Idylwood’s exquisite grilled salmon with hearts of artichoke, gnocchi and pesto sauce.

Then there’s the atmosphere. A good wine bar is designed to delight the wine-aficionado’s eye as well as the palate. The Idlywood’s warm Mediterranean decor with its ubiquitous wine racks, for example, enhances the pleasure of whatever vintage you’re sipping.

Most important perhaps is the appreciation you gain for a particular wine when it’s not served by someone whom you think merely read a blurb about it somewhere but instead, like Idlywood partners Hedi Ben-Abdallah and Marco Escudero, can rattle off multiple reasons why they’re recommending it, including the characteristics of soil and climate that impart a special flavor or aroma. As our discussion got more spirited, they even joined in the conversation and tasting, uncorking a couple of their own favorites.

Which brings me to another point—one other appealing advantage of a wine bar is that it seems to promote highly creative conversations about the wine you’re drinking.

As it did with the member of our group who described three Pinot Noirs as having the qualities of different types of lovers. To him, a Les Jamelles 2005 from France’s Côte d’Or was a “one night stand” and a Jezebal 2006 from Oregon was “easy to get comfortable with,” but the Argentine Luigi Bosca Reserva 2005 “takes you places” that reveal why one has a lover in the first place.

For me, either one would have made a yummy complement to the salmon. Whether it was the power of my friend’s suggestion or the wine’s velvety smoothness, my favorite turned out to be the Luigi Bosca, too.

Another companion, on the other hand, raved about the Les Jamelles’ “complex and elegant” fruit tones and noted that the aromas improved ever so nicely the more it breathed. Then, getting with the program, he added: “Not a woman of mystery—playful.” 

At a hotel restaurant, by comparison, chances are the discussion would probably have included an appreciative nod to the wine (sadly, picked from a list with far fewer selections) but dwelt mostly on such relatively mundane topics as one’s 401K, some sports team’s woes or the latest home improvement project.

Thanks to the Web, it’s fairly easy to explore the terroir, so to speak, of wine bars in your area. As a first step, this blog’s custom map provides a user-friendly way to pin down local establishments. Other helpful sources for reviews are Yelp and the wine forum at Chowhound.

Give a wine bar a try next time you’re in a dining-out mood. Not all wine bars are created equal. But you might get lucky and find a fun-and-festive equivalent of Idylwood in your neighborhood. 

As for vinothekid, this may be my first wine bar visit blogging for Wine News Review, but it definitely won’t be the last. And how about you? If you’ve found a wine bar you like, share it by posting a comment below.

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.