a time for wine

[rone]

ikkyu2 asked me if i could say something on the subject of wine; "your philosophy of wine, what you look for, what you try to avoid, what you particularly like about certain grapes or particular wineries or particular bottles of wine."  He also said i was "good at writing about wine," but that's too kind.  I like wine, and when i write about it, that enjoyment comes through; on a technical basis, however, i consider myself a hack at best because my wine vocabulary is still developing, and i have a very hard time finding words that can describe what i smell and taste in wine.

I should start out by saying that i didn't care for wine for a long time.  I'd had some wine (probably all from Chile) when i was in Ecuador, and i didn't dislike it, but i wasn't in a position to appreciate it, either.  When i came to the States, i mostly drank wretched mass-produced beer (and no wine that i can recall) until i turned 21.  Afterwards, i'd occasionally have wine when i was eating out with my family, but all i'd find was big, tannic cabernet sauvignons and buttery chardonnays.  So i shrugged and decided that wine wasn't for me.

Fast-forward to the time when i was dating Kim and she took me to Napa for the first time.  That was quite an eye opener.  After that, i became a pinot noir aficionado, i think because it's a lighter-bodied red wine that's low in tannins.  I also enjoyed Mondavi's Fumé Blanc, which is their fancy name for sauvignon blanc.

Later i developed an aversion to zinfandels because every zinfandel i had tasted like raisins.  Bonny Doon's Cardinal Zin broke the streak and soon i found that the most common wine in my rack was zinfandel and cabernet sauvignon.  Wait, when did i start liking cabernet sauvignon?  Well, i started finding some wineries that had CS that wasn't a punch in the mouth with every sip.

The first chardonnay i found that i liked was Thomas Fogerty's.  It's still rare for me to find a chardonnay i like, although the Santa Cruz Mountains wineries tend to make chardonnays in the style i prefer, with little-to-no oak and secondary malolactic fermentation (which yields that buttery taste).

If i were to have a philosophy on wine, it would be to seek out something different, like single-grape wines of varietals that usually end up in blends, such as Justin's petit verdot, which was excellent.  I also seek out rare grapes, such as valdiguié, charbono, blaufränkisch, and négrette.  Lastly, i'm a dessert wine slut.  Your average muscat is fun, but a great dessert wine is indescribably good; it makes all your endorphin flash bulbs pop in your head.

More later.

Comments

[some_other_dave]

Different single-grape varietals, dessert wines. Damn--too bad you missed the '99 Grignolino Port from Heitz Cellar. TJs had it, and I thought it was wonderful. It had nothing but fruit, but boy howdy did it have tons of yummy fruit!

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

In fact, i have a bottle of their `03 grignolino port.

[some_other_dave]

Hmm, I wonder how the '03 compares to the '99? I was very disappointed in the '00, and the times that I tried more recent vintages up at the Heitz tasting room I was disappointed.

Then again, I really like my ports to be total fruit-bombs, with no caramel or raisin to them. And not a lot of other flavors (or rather, nothing strong) in the mix, come to think of it.

Prager had a white port a few years back that had huge overtones of buttered popcorn. It was the weirdest damn thing! (I think I still have a bottle of it. :) )