The Web’s wine buzz: Including tips to make Chinese New Year more festive

Tune in to what top wine bloggers and experts are decanting into cyberspace with handpicked highlights of their latest and greatest. In this episode, we find advice for long-unopened bottles, tips for making the coming Year of the Rat more festive and a long list of reasons to think again about Merlot.

If you have a special bottle of wine gathering dust somewhere — the one that’s remained unopened through the years, perhaps with some fond memories sealed inside — start looking for the corkscrew.

Because Saturday night, Feb. 23, is Open That Bottle Night 9, as good an excuse as any to finally have a taste.

Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher at The Wall Street Journal explain:

Imagine if an evil genie took some of your very best memories and hid them in a wine bottle. That’s what so many of us do to ourselves. These dear bottles have a special way of retrieving warm and often-forgotten memories, but you have to pop the cork to release them. That’s why we invented Open That Bottle Night.

A nice read on what various friends of theirs have stashed and swear to finally open. You might be tempted to do the same.

You’ll also find a handy primer on the care and handling on what might be rather fragile vintages.

But that’s not the only wine-benefiting festivity on the horizon, as Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg at The Washington Post remind us.

The Chinese New Year (Lunar Year 4706) begins on Feb. 7, ringing in the Year of the Rat. This most important of Chinese holidays, celebrated by one-quarter of the world’s population, merits an extended 15-day celebration, and its time-honored food traditions are beautifully enhanced by the right wines.

Perk up the Chinese cuisine with their selections of fruitier wine, ranging from a “beautifully balanced, crisp, fruity and minerally” 2007 Rudolf Muller Riesling Kabinett ($11) to a 100-percent pinot noir-based NV Gruet Methode Champenoise Rose Brut ($16) from New Mexico, “with strawberry notes and a hint of vanilla on the finish … terrific with our Peking duck.”

The article includes a sumptuous pairing chart, to bring out the best in, say, those shrimp dumplings or whole steamed fish.

Meanwhile, at Wine Enthusiast, Tim Patterson offers a smorgasbord of reasons for reacquainting ourselves with that once top-selling red that has fallen from popular grace, Merlot.

A widespread urban legend says that Merlot was whacked sideways off its pedestal in 2004 by a certain movie set in Santa Barbara’s Pinot Noir country. In fact, according to industry insiders, the leveling off started two or three years earlier. Mark Pucylowski, buying director for Sam’s Wines & Spirits in Chicago, noticed that some of his California producers were grafting over to Syrah well before Merlot became a cinematic expletive.

In some cases, the fall from grace was well deserved, particularly the California Merlot that “was planted on marginal sites and/or asked to bring in too large a crop.”

But there are still plenty of good ones to be had.

And the Wine Enthusiast Tasting Panel brings us a long list of some of the best — originating everywhere from France, Italy and California to Washington State, Australia and New Zealand.

And many of them sit well within the Wine News Review fairly frugal affordability index, including the Banrock Station 2005 Merlot (South Eastern Australia)  at $5 (not a typo).

Weekend wine bargains: “soft and round” tops experts’ picks

Comparing the picks: A survey of recent selections from popular wine experts, spotlighting bargains and best values.

2006 Ironstone Vineyards Obsession Symphony Sierra Foothills, U.S.A. – California:
Natalie MacLean — “soft and round with a touch of sweetness” and the brand’s typical fragrance, her best-value white. $14.95

2006 McManis Family Vineyards Syrah, Calif.:
Jerry Shriver — serves up tones of black cherries and blueberries … “I could quaff this by itself or with a nice pork roast.” About $11

Tahbilk Marsanne 2005 Nagambie Lakes, Victoria:
Jancis Robinson — she calls this quite a rare variety, “pale gold and has an attractively wide range of aromas and flavours – ripe apricots and peaches, ripe apples, something slightly floral, maybe honeysuckle, and just a little bit of honey.” Under £7 in the UK

Banfi, Toscana IGT (Tuscany, Italy) Chardonnay & Pinot Grigio “Le Rime” 2006:
Michael Franz — “tasty little wine is fresh and pure and very usefully balanced on the line between light and medium body,” offering pear and white-melon flavors. $9

Yellow Tail Chardonnay South Eastern Australia The Reserve 2005:
Wine Spectator — neither heavy nor sweet, “soft and fruity, with spice and floral character piling on.” $11

Tip: Print out this list and bring it to you local wine shop — even if a specific favorite isn’t available, ask the salesperson to recommend something similar. Or 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)
  • Organic (red, white, in between)

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!

Latest Web wine buzz — from Spanish excellence to Bordeaux bargains

Tune in to what top wine bloggers and experts are decanting into cyberspace with handpicked highlights of their latest and greatest, ranging from “emerging excellence” from Spain and an un-frugal selection for the wine-lover in your life to Bordeaux strategies and South American bargains.


“Emerging excellence” is the theme of the latest column by Michael Franz at Wine Review Online — and decent prices might be a sub-theme — for what he calls remarkable wines from three Spanish areas.

Thirteen wines are listed, ranging from $12 to $30, and most are seen as terrific values, “balanced and packed with deep, satisfying flavors.”

There’s little doubt that Spain, of all the countries in Europe, is sending us the best bargains in red wine … The only bad news to be reported is that availability in North America is spotty from market to market … So, you may need to do a bit of searching to try these wines, but I believe they are well worth the search.


Warning: Utterly forget the Wine News Review fairly frugal affordability index with this item.

For Dorothy J. Gaiter And John Brecher at The Wall Street Journal, it’s that pre-holiday time of year when they like to recommend “one break-the-bank, you-shouldn’t-have bottle for the wine-lover in your life.”

This time around it’s the “lusty” Penfolds Grange, made from Shiraz and occasionally some Cabernet Sauvignon. They tasted 10 vintages, going back to 1971, and were blown away.

We have been writing this column for almost a decade now and have been drinking and studying wine for 35 years, but we have never had such a consistently exciting tasting. We expected to enjoy these wines, but we never would have guessed that five of the 10 wines would rate Delicious or higher.


Even the cost of Grange seems incredibly modest compared with Bordeaux prices, which as Joseph Ward at The Washington Post observes, have “gone mad.” Like, $8,000 for a case of wine?!

The good news is that Bordeaux lovers can continue to drink Bordeaux, and not go bankrupt — “with some adjustments.” Ward highlights five Bordeaux finds ranging from $20 to $120 dollars.

And he offers several strategies to help you latch on to other relatively affordable bottles, including:

Look for undervalued great wines from earlier vintages — another reason you’ll need a good wine merchant, although the Internet is useful, too. An outstanding vintage for the mainly cabernet-sauvignon wines of the M-doc is 1996, while 1998 favored the merlot communes of St. Emilion and Pomerol. High 2005 prices have put pressure on those earlier vintages, but there are still relative bargains. And those wines have several years of bottle age and are either close to or at their peak, so it won’t be long before you can realize a delectable return on your investment.


For more down-to-earth bargains, turn to Food & Wine, where Ray Isle serves up the “17 best values” from Chile and Argentina.

Isle starts us off with a little history lesson: Did you know that when the first Thanksgiving was being celebrated in Plymouth Colony in 1621, grapes had been cultivated in those two South American countries for nearly 75 years?

Not all of their wines today may be remarkable, “or even good,” Isle says, but “best bottlings” like those listed in this article, ranging from $9 to $20, are extraordinary buys that could easily grace a modern-day Thanksgiving table. A nice primer:

From Chile, look for crisp, citrusy Sauvignon Blanc from the Casablanca and San Antonio valleys, both located close to the Pacific Ocean, and reds made from Carmenère, a distinctively spicy French grape abundant in Chilean vineyards. In Argentina, the Salta province is known for Torrontés, a native grape variety with a distinctive, floral aroma that makes some of the country’s most interesting whites. But Malbec from Mendoza is unquestionably the country’s marquee variety—its rich blueberry and blackberry flavors, light smokiness and soft tannins lead to immensely appealing red wines.


Switching continents, Roger Voss at Wine Enthusiast tells us to prepare for another surprise from Austria.

That is, don’t just think of whites such as Grüner Veltliner and Rieslings when it comes to Austrian wines, because producers have been busily upgrading their red wine-making techniques.

Ten notable red-wine producers are spotlighted. But, as Voss explains, not all is rosy, at least from a pocketbook perspective:

There is, sadly, a downside to these deliciously fruity, sometimes complex, serious wines: price. High local demand has meant that for us—especially with the weak dollar—these wines are not cheap. The norm is $25 and up, although there are some wines under $20.

But it is worth seeking out a selection of the best (see sidebar). Austria has not yet reached the world league for its reds, as it has for its whites. But the producers are moving fast. Ten years ago, this article could not have been written.

Weekend wine list — experts’ picks: ‘terrific’ Riesling to ‘seductive’ Syrah

Comparing the picks: A survey of recent selections from popular 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:

2004 750 Langwerth Von Simmern Riesling Kabinett Rheingau, Germany:
Natalie MacLean — you’ll find it to be a “terrific, well-balanced riesling with refreshing aromas of lime and citrus,” goes well with chicken, pork, ham. $22.95

Pacific Rim Chenin Blanc:
Jerry Shriver — “hits you with a seductive flowery bouquet, which leads to faintly sweet and lush pear flavors and brown-spice notes” — recommended with spicy Asian seafood dishes. $12

Cockburn’s Ten Year Old Tawny Port:
Jay McInerney — “lighter and mellower than the Vintage Ports from this house and slightly drier in style than other tawnies.” $26.99

Etim Blanco 2005 Montsant:
Jancis Robinson — she calls this 100% Garnacha Blanca “a revelation and a bargain … a full bodied, flavour-packed yet refreshing dry white.” £6.99

Stefano Moccagatta 2004 Tannat:
Edward Deitch — “one of the best red wines I’ve tasted this year … elegant and refined, full of dark berry fruit — blackberry, blueberry and boysenberry.” $26

Colli Orientali del Friuli, Pinot Grigio ‘Ramato’, Visintini (2006):
decanter.com — “marvellous wine from Grave del Friuli breaks the Pinot Grigio mould,” with its pale copper colour and “lovely purity of fruit.” £8.95

2003 Goose Ridge Vineyards Columbia Valley Syrah:
Lynne Char Bennett — a “rewarding” wine whose aspects include “dark woody notes, peppery bacon, extracted blackberry,” among an ample list of Washington state Syrah and Rhone-style blends featured here. $20

Tip: Print out this list and bring it to you local wine shop — even if a specific favorite isn’t available, ask the salesperson to recommend something similar. Or 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!