New Year's Wine Resolutions

Happy New Year! It's time once more to make some resolutions for 2007. Rather than bore you with the perennial (lose weight, exercise more), the prosaic (organize files, balance checkbook regularly), and the preposterous (learn to play cello), here are my wine resolutions for the upcoming year, and they even seem like resolutions I can keep. (vintage image from Caaren Charles)

1. Drink More Sparkling Wine: As the recent WBW #28 proved, there is a lot of good, affordable sparkling wine. Sure, it's all on sale now since most sparkling wine is purchased in the US between December 1 and January 1, but a wide range of bottlings is available at attractive price points all year. The world of sparkling wines shouldn't be about just the holidays. With all the wine preservation gadgets out there, it really isn't any more difficult to keep sparkling wine in the fridge for 2-3 days than any other wine. And, how many other wines go with food as well as champagne? It's as appropriate for a caesar salad as it is for lobster or some simple grilled chicken. I'm going to make a point of keeping some affordable sparklers on hand to pop in the fridge so that every day can be a celebration.

2. Keep Drinking Unfashionable Wine: Back when Merlot was fashionable and you could get domestic Pinot Noir for a song, I drank Pinot. Now that Pinot is fashionable and prices are sky-rocketing, I'm drinking more Syrah and Gamay. One of the best budget wine tips around is to drink unfashionable wine. Readily available wines that are for the moment unfashionable include Gamay, Petite Sirah, Chenin Blanc, Riesling, and Gewurztraminer. Fashion is fickle, so of course one of these will soon become fashionable, and then I'll turn to something else. But it's always a good idea to keep track of trends--and then drink something else! Added benefits: keeps you from falling into a rut, and enhances imaginative thinking about wine, since you are drinking what you discover you like and not what the marketing machine is telling you is "hot."

3. Get to Know Spain: Over the past year I've only bought three wines from Spain, and I gave two of them away without drinking them. That's a situation I need to rectify, since Spain produces interesting, food-friendly wines at great prices. I'm going to learn more about the varietals of this ancient wine-growing region, and drink more of them, too. I've got five bottles of red in the cellar, ready to be tasted in 2007, and will be buying some whites soon.

4. Take the Leap into Burgundy: This year a very dear friend gave me a 2003 Vincent Girardin Echezeaux. I was so awed at owning this wine, that I stuck it in the cellar to think about how best to drink it and realized I have a major case of Burgundy Anxiety. OK, the high prices on Burgundy on the west coast of the US (lots of shipping miles for a fragile wine) don't help. I drink lots of Beaujolais, which is technically from Burgundy, so this is clearly something I could get over if I put my mind to it. I am now the proud owner of 4 bottles of wine from Burgundy: the afore-mentioned 2003 Echezeaux; a 2005 Domaine Raymond Dupont-Fahn Auxey-Duresses; a 2002 La Chablisienne Chablis; and a sparkling rose cremant de bourgogne. This year I am determined to do a little more reading, buying, and tasting to learn about the wine. I will probably not become a regular drinker of Burgundy wines any time soon, given their scarcity and cost, but I would like not to break out into a rash at the mere thought of them.

What are your wine resolutions for 2007? What old habits are you going to try to break, and what new ones are you going to replace them with?

A Special Chardonnay: 2003 Eric Kent Sonoma Coast Chardonnay

This beautiful label by artist Colleen Teitgen serves as the first hint of the beautiful wine inside made by her husband, Erick Kent. The 2003 Eric Kent Wine Cellars Sonoma Coast Chardonnay is so beautiful inside and out that I've thrown my usual "availability" criteria out the window on this one, folks. Eric Kent only made 9 barrels of this wine--just 225 cases. It's the smallest production wine I think I've had, and you probably won't find a bottle since even the winery is sold out. I nabbed one at Chronicle Wine Cellar for the unbelievably good price of $19.95 (this wine normally retails for around $27) It is an amazing chardonnay, and represents excellent QPR. If you are in Pasadena, and can beat me back there to see if there are any left, you may be able to nab one, too.

Eric Kent's 2003 Sonoma Coast Chardonnay is a classic cool-climate chardonnay with grapes sourced from Russian River and Sebastapol vineyards. It's rich straw color is a preamble to the golden aromas of ripe pear and honey. These lead to flavors of pear, vanilla, and a touch of lemon. The wine spent 15 months in French oak barrels (60% new), but the oak is so well integrated that you get the richness without any oakey flavor. Instead, you are aware of a heavenly honey-vanilla persistence from the aromas through the finish. This is a huge chardonnay (15.5% alc/vol), but the alcohol is somehow kept in balance with the wine's impressive varietal structure.

With this nearly perfect chardonnay we had some perfectly matched food: seared scallops with tarragon mashed potatoes and tarragon beurre blanc sauce. Like the wine, this meal was both fresh and rich, which resulted in a nice partnership of flavors and textures.

Getting your hands on a bottle of Erick Kent wines in the future is going to be tough, since the entire output of the winery is miniscule and the UK's Decanter magazine named the winery "one to watch" in October of 2006. There is a pre-release club that I am extremely tempted to join (5 bottles a year at 30% discount) and the website has a good list of all the stores in the US that carry their wines. If one is near you, I'd suggest you hot-foot it over there and put your name down now for the next bottle that comes in the door. Yes, it's that good.

A Sugar Plum of a Wine: the 2003 Ferrari-Carano Siena

The 2003 Ferrari-Carano Siena ($16.69, Costco) is a red blend made up of Sangiovese, Malbec, and Cabernet Sauvignon with a touch of Petit Verdot. As I said in an earlier post, I prefer red blends that have a rhyme or a reason to them, and I cannot for the life of me figure this one out. The Ferrari-Carano website explains that to reflect their Italian heritage they blended Sangiovese with "Sonoma County's finest grapes." OK, but why? And why blend Sangiovese (plummy) with Malbec (more plummy)? A huge fan of their Fume Blanc wine, which is one of the great values in California Sauvignon Blanc, and their Syrah, I decided to give this red blend a try.

Despite my reservations, when I popped the cork and poured this wine into the glass it had a beautiful darkly reddish purple color to it. Sniffing the wine, I could detect aromas of black licorice candy and plums along with a slightly hot, alcoholic note. Drinking the wine brought out pronounced plummy flavors, with notes of cinnamon. This sweet and spicy wine has good QPR, with the plummy flavors characteristic of Sangiovese and Malbec (along with the Sangiovese cinnamon), but it is a bit pricey for a rustic red blend. I'm not sorry I had it, but I'm not sure I'd seek out another bottle, either.

We had the Siena wine with a traditional Italian dish done up the Jamie Oliver way: pollo alla cacciatora (aka Chicken Cacciatore). After pouring all of our remaining 2004 Big House Red over the chicken for a long slow marinade (the chicken is cooked in the marinade later), and combining a flavorful blend of tomatoes, anchovies, bay leaves, and olives it was popped into a low oven for 1 1/2 hours. It was rich, earthy, and pungent with all those anchovies and olives. This robust, saline fare was a perfect foil for the plummy sweetness of the Siena.

Throwing a Wine Tasting Party

Phew! We're in the week break between the end of Hanukkah and Christmas and the New Year's festivities. If you are stumped for ideas on how to while away the hours with family and friends on the Eve (waiting for the ball to fall) or the Day (football anyone?) why not consider a little wine tasting?

You can always buy a wine party kit, like this one on offer from the Napa General Store. Or, armed with a color printer and some ingenuity, you can put together your own wine tasting kit using the internet. I was stunned to discover how many online resources there are for people interested in hosting such an event. Everything from placemats to tasting note sheets and flavor maps are there for free downloading thanks to the generosity of wine bloggers and wine writers with more traditional websites.

Wine Parties demand a little bit of forethought and planning, but nothing too stressful. Here's an outline of what you will need to sort out in advance.

1. Pre-Planning
First you have to decide on a few details. The most important is whether you are going to do a blind tasting with brown paper bags, or a regular tasting.

I would recommend the blind tasting only if you set a single varietal or type of wine as a theme (like merlots, Oregon Pinots, or sparklers) or if you are all impressively geeky and knowledgeable and want to guess the varietals. If you have relative wine newbies, this can be extremely intimidating and Not Fun At All, so don't go with "guess the wine" unless you know this will be enjoyable to all concerned.

In a regular tasting, the bottles are lined up on the table without bags, and you know what you're tasting when you taste it. This is your best bet if everyone is bringing different varietals and types of wine, and/0r you've got some relatively inexperienced tasters and want to make this fun.

Irrespective of what kind of wine tasting you want to have, you should set a price limit or price range to help guide your guests in the wine store. I would go for under $15, but with some wine types or themes you may have to go higher.

As for number of guests, 8-12 is usually an ideal number for a wine tasting, but you can certainly still have a good time with fewer or more people. If you are going to have more than 20, you should have 2 tables set up and divide the bottles between the tables.

2. Invitations
To send invitations, I always use Evite, the online invitation service that sends out invitations, reminders, and lets you track rsvps. The basic service is free, and for a winter wine tasting I particularly liked this invitation. Less seasonal options include this wine and cheese invite, a surrealistic wine invite, a luridly purple invite with wine glasses, and one with a photographed glass of white wine. (You can always design your own using one of your favorite photos if none of these suit.) Make sure you tell people what to bring in the message section, i.e. "any wine under $20," "Italian reds under $15," or "California Cabs."

3. Glasses
Yes, it is certainly impressive to have six glasses set out on the tables for each and every guest, but how many of us have 60 glasses? More important, who wants to wash them afterwards?

Instead, I'd go with 3 glasses per person (one white, one red, one sparkling) and instruct people to rinse between pours. Remember to put buckets and pitchers of water on the table for this purpose.

Alternatively, just put 1 glass at each setting, and rinse more often. If you really want to go nuts on glasses, head over to a wine chain store near you and see if they have any boxed wine glass sets laying around. I picked up 2 boxes last year, each neatly holding 24 glasses.


4. Tasting Paraphernalia
Here's where the internet is REALLY your friend.

First, you need a flavor and aroma guide for each person. You can spring for the original wine aroma wheel, or download Alder Yarrow's Vinography Aroma Card and print it out on a color printer. Trust me: do not skip this step. It takes so much of the mystery out of wine tasting, and even wine drinkers who start saying "I smell wine," end up saying "Hey, I smell cherries!" with a little help from these cards.

Second, you need tasting sheets. OpenBottles combines flavor/aroma hints with a tasting sheet in one handy page for up to 3 wines. De Long Wine Moment's 3-wine tasting sheet uses icons and checkboxes, but leaves the description of flavors and aromas to you. This sheet is my personal favorite, since it is good for newbies and more advanced tasters. If you are doing a blind tasting of one varietal, Wine Country Getaways has a specially designed tasting sheet just for that purpose.

A third optional step is to print out flight sheets: placemats with circles for the wine glasses. This is the thing to do if you are going to put out multiple glasses of wine. The Frugal Oenophile has downloadable flight sheets for either 6-glass flights or 8-glass flights.

5. Getting Ready for the Party
Just before the party, set out your wine glasses, aroma wheels/cards, tasting sheets, pens/pencils, jugs of water, water glasses, rinsing/spitting buckets, and baskets of bread or crackers. You need to arrange these on the table as if you are having a dinner--not buffet style--with everything within arm's reach for each guest. This might require multiple water jugs and buckets, so check your cupboards for tupperware and pitchers in advance.

6. Party
Take the wine off people's hands when they arrive.

If it is a blind tasting, whisk them into the kitchen and remove the foil which also has identifying logos on it before putting the bottle into a plain wine bag that you've saved from a trip to the supermarket.

If it isn't a blind tasting, start figuring out the order or wines. Classic wisdom is to go from lightest to heaviest whites, then the lightest to heaviest reds. How do you do that? Check the alcohol levels in the tiny type. It's up to you if there is a sparkler whether to start or end with it. If there is a dessert wine or port, always end with that.

Enjoy!

Wine Blogging Wednesday #29: Biodynamic Wine

Jack and Joanne at Fork & Bottle are the hosts for the January edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday. The theme for this month's event is Biodynamic wines, and you can click on the theme for a full brief. On January 17, winebloggers will post their tasting notes for wines produced following this method.

I've written before on biodynamics, and in that post I reviewed a 2004 Sollner Danubio Gruner Veltliner and provided links to stories about biodynamic farming methods (including a link to an NPR story). Biodynamics uses traditional farming practices gathered together by the theosophist Rudolf Steiner, and an increasing number of winemakers are being drawn to the methods for reasons of sustainability and because some feel that the methods increase terroir in the wines. I was first introduced to biodynamic farming at Oz Farm in Point Arena, CA where I tasted a fabulous 2002 Porter-Bass Zinfandel that was made biodynamically. You can check out my tasting note on Cellar-Tracker by clicking here. It may sound like hooey, but I think there's something to it--or at least that's what my tastebuds tell me. And I approve of anything that is easier on the land and uses less chemical intervention.

If you want to find a biodynamic wine and participate in the event, or even just drink along in the comfort of your own home, it may take you longer than usual to find one of these wines. Many are produced in relatively small quantities. Jack and Joanne have provided an excellent list of vineyards who use biodynamic farming methods, so happy hunting and I'll see you back here in mid-January!