Study Finds Link Between Red Wine, Letting Mother Know What You Really Think

Just three glasses with dinner can support finally letting her have it!

CHICAGO—Health experts have long known that drinking red wine can have such positive benefits as reducing blood vessel damage, lowering the risk of heart attack, and preventing harmful LDL cholesterol from forming. But researchers at the Northwestern University Department of Preventive Medicine have recently found that the consumption of four to six glasses of red wine, most notably at dinner or a family function, may be linked to totally going off on one’s mom.

According to a study published Monday in The American Journal Of Medicine, a previously unknown ingredient in red wine has been shown to cause a marked improvement of vocal clarity and emotional acuity—while reducing overall inhibition—after only four glasses.

During routine trials, subjects who imbibed five glasses or more showed a remarkable increase in specific mental functions, such as the ability to recall every time their mothers had been unsupportive of their boyfriends or husbands.

A striking reduction in the time needed to translate personal epiphanies into loud, public epiphanies was also noted.

“It seems the benefits of red wine consumption are virtually limitless,” said Dr. Susan Zheng, lead researcher on the study. “Many were unable to recall a single time their mother had paid more attention to their sister’s soccer games than to their starring role in the school play. But after drinking only one bottle of standard Merlot, these participants could not only remember, but could actually sing whole stretches of Annie Get Your Gun, even while sobbing. It’s extraordinary.”

Dr. Zheng explained that the 100 women who participated in the study were split into two groups. One group was seated at the end of a long dinner table and subjected to backhanded compliments about their housekeeping abilities while steadily imbibing 8-ounce glasses of Turning Leaf Cabernet. The other group, a control group, was allowed to celebrate the holidays at home.

The positive effects of wine consumption were seen in as little as three hours, with 86 percent of participants showing greater resistance to unsolicited career advice, 77 percent displaying increased mental function in the area of the brain devoted to reminding you why Dad left you in the first place, and 60 percent demonstrating less concern to “play this little happy-happy game anymore.”

Subsequent tests revealed that, if the wine is consumed prior to dinner or on an empty stomach, the benefits are increased nearly tenfold.

“I highly suggest every woman between the ages of 21 and 39 allow a few glasses of wine to be a part of their healthy diet,” Dr. Zheng said before pouring herself the remains of an open bottle. “But what do I know. I’m just the lead researcher for an entire team of Northwestern grad students who look to me for the answer because I’m their boss. All my achievements are irrelevant because I never had any kids, right, Mom? Right?”

The long-term advantages of red wine consumption have also been noted among the well-adjusted and insightful people of France, where a bottle of claret is a regular part of mealtime from a much earlier age. In a recent survey conducted in the town of Saint-Florentin, researchers were unable to find a single person over the age of 20 who had not already reaped the benefits of letting loose on the soul-sucking banshee who brought you into this world just to torture you with endless comments about your hair and dress.

However, medical experts are quick to point out that red wine is not, in itself, sufficient to promote a healthy psyche. Similar positive effects have been found in other food and drink items, such as White Russians, vodka tonics, Canadian Club whisky with flat ginger ale, and anything served at a wedding.

“Thus far, we have been unable to determine any negative effects of increased wine consumption,” said Dr. Hugh Van Pelt, also with the Northwestern team. “Some women have reported feelings of nausea and headaches the following morning, but they said these feelings were no worse than the nausea and headaches they felt for the days leading up to the dinner, so the results are inconclusive.”

The Northwestern team is currently in the process of securing funding to determine what ingredient in bourbon enables one to finally wrestle one’s stepfather to the ground.

(courtesy of The Onion)

CheapWineFinder’s Beginners Guide To Wine Part 5

Where Do The Good Value Wines Come From?

Winemakers are paying more attention to value priced wines than ever before. It is relatively easy to find a perfectly nice affordable wine to drink. With a little knowledge, you can find a perfectly awesome wine to drink. There are wine growing areas around the world that are famed for their wines, Bordeaux, Tuscany, Napa, Rioja, etc…, wines from these regions are excellent and in demand and the price of these wines reflect that. But often winemakers from just outside these growing regions also make excellent wines, but because they are not located in the official boundaries of the hot, trendy area, they can’t charge as much for their wine.

In France, Bordeaux wines tend to be very expensive, but wines from the Rhone Valley for reds and the Loire Valley for whites can be bargains in comparison. In Spain, Rioja makes wonderful pricey wines and Jumilla makes wonderful affordable wines. In Italy, Tuscany is one of several regions making exciting wines, but Puglia and Sicily are making excellent well priced wines. In Washington State, the wines from Walla Walla rival the wines from Napa, but Columbia Valley makes a wide variety of excellent under $20 wines. In California, Napa is famous for it’s outstanding wine, but Lodi and Paso Robles (among others) are making top shelf wines. In Australia there are more under $20 wines with a rating of 90 points or more than any other wine region. Australia has been concentrating on it’s value wines far longer than most of the wine regions.Portugal is famous for it’s Port wines, but the food friendly red and white wines it produces are of very good quality and extremely under priced. The wines of South America are terrific values, they have really come into their own as a mature wine growing region in the last few years. Land and labor costs are lower there than most of the wine growing areas and they have not yet developed a trendy reputation to jack up the price of their wine, The quality of the wines are on par with any wine regions out there and the price is far less. You should be exploring the wines of Chile and Argentina (and  Brazil), before the prices go up. South Africa is another up and coming wine region that has quality wines and reasonable prices.

There are many different varietals of grapes that make very tasty wines, the more popular varieties tend to cost more than the less known grapes. While Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon are well known grapes and can make exceptional wines, they are not the only grapes that can be turned into kick ass wine. For white wines some good grapes to explore are: Alberino, Chenin Blanc, Viognier, Riesling, Gewurztraminer and Sauvignon Blanc.  For red wines try: Cabernet Franc, Grenache, Malbec, Mourvedre, Petite Sirah, Shiraz and Tinta Negra for some well priced wines. I named only a few of the available grape varietals, experiment, see which ones are the right wines for you.

Wine blends can be very reasonably priced (not always, some blends can be very pricey), but blending wine can be a excellent way of making grapes with deficiencies into to very good wine. Say you have some Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, they taste good, but the nose is kind of light and the color is weak and the tannins are a little too noticeable. It’s going to make a lousy single varietal wine, but if you add some Merlot to soften the tannins and then throw in a little grenache to add another flavor and then some Cab Franc to punch up the color and finally splash in some Viognier (a white wine, but it has a very fragrant pretty nose) into the vat, you now have a well rounded bottle of wine. Most bottles of red wines have other grapes added into the mix, in California the law states that for a bottle to labeled as a single varietal, say Merlot, it has to contain at least 75% Merlot, so 25% of the bottle can be whatever grapes  the winemaker thought the Merlot needed to really shine.

Be open minded about different grape varietals and growing areas. Say, you tried 3 Spanish wines and were not that crazy about any of them, well you have only tasted less than 1% of all the Spanish wines available. That is too small of a sample to make an informed conclusion. Keep trying new wines, there are so many wonderful wine being made, don’t settle for just what you are familiar with.

CheapWineFinder’s Beginners Guide To Wine Part 4

Wine Terms and What They Mean

Oak: Wine is aged in oak barrels to help “keep” the wine, it will last longer, by preventing oxidation, it also imparts a specific flavor. In white wine the oak tastes of butter and toasty flavors, in red wine it tastes of vanilla. In the fancy expensive wines, the oak is extremely evident in the taste of the wine while it is young. After it is cellared for a number of years, the effect of the oak is diminished and the fruit flavors mingle with the layers of oak and a rather magical flavor is produced. But, in the wines that are priced under $20, there is no time available to have these flavors inter- mingle. The oak taste, if balanced, is still desirable, so the winemakers do things like age half the wine in second fill oak barrels and the other half in stain-less steel vats. The wine gets a bit of the oak taste of the high end wines, but not much of it’s aging properties. Some under $20 dollar wines are aged completely in stain-less tanks, these wines are very fruity in taste and should be  drunk within 4 or 5 years of being produced (the sooner the better), but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Chardonnay’s are constantly going back and forth, this year oaked Chardonnay’s are in and the next year stain-less Chardonnays are the rage. If you can smell the oak in the nose, that is a sign that the wine is not well balanced. If you taste more than the butter or vanilla, if you get that real dry, chemical quality, then the wine is poorly made.

Tannins are a compound in the grape skin that give the wine “structure”, it is hard to describe but it gives the wine backbone. The tannins give the fruit some zip, they stop the wine from getting mushy or flabby. Tannins are only evident in red wine, since they are derived from the grape skins, white wine has no contact with the skins during the wine making process. Tannins don’t have a specific taste, but you can feel a sharp jab in the back of your mouth. The fruit of the wine should blend in and actually over power the tannins, tannins should be sensed, not tasted. Again like oak, tannins are ultra evident in high end wines that need to be aged for a number of years to reach their peak. In under $20 bottles of wine, which are usually made in a drink it now style, the winemakers try to have a touch of tannins, but not too much. It is not easy to accomplish and most value red wines that have problems, have tannin problems.

High end, super expensive wines are made to cellared or aged for 10,15,20 or more years. It is a huge waste of money to drink those wines when they are young. Value priced wines are usually specifically made to be consumed young. To properly store wine for aging you need a dark climate controlled stable area, wine does not react well to swings in temperature and humidity. That wine rack on your kitchen counter is fine to store wine for a month or two, but unless your kitchen is a dark, quite, climate controlled space, it just won’t do for long term cellaring.  Most under $20 wines will improve with a couple of years of aging, but exactly how much aging is just right and how much aging is too much is hard to say. For the high end wine ,there are all sorts of experts that will tell you what to expect from your properly stored 18 year old wine, but nobody is paying much attention to the effects of aging on that $12 Spanish wine you bought yesterday. If you are buying under $20 wines you probably don’t have a fancy wine cellar in your home and I doubt that you have a cave to store wine in your backyard, so if you want to cellar wine what do you do? You can buy a wine refrigerator, the large ones are very expensive and it does not make much sense to have a wine cooler that costs more than the value of the wine it stores. The smaller ones are more affordable, but don’t hold enough wine to make cellaring practical. Until you get that house with the wine cellar, I think the solution is to drink all the wine you buy and don’t worry about cellaring.

What temperature is right for drinking red or white wines? Refrigeration is a fairly recent development and for ages wine was stored in caves where the wine was kept in 55 to 60 degree temperature. But, people didn’t run to a cave every time they wanted some wine, so some bottles and casks had to be stored above ground in reasonable proximity to the drinkers. This means that for most of history wine was drunk at room temperature. Today it is common to chill white wine and to drink red wine at room temperature. But there are schools of thought that says this is backwards, white wine tends to have more delicate flavors and the chilling tends to mute those flavors. Red wine has bolder flavors and chilling the wine would mute the bolder flavors and allow the subtler tastes to thrive. So, drink the wine which ever way tastes best to you.

You will hear the word “terrior” used in relation to wine and it has nothing to do with blowing things up. Terrior is a French concept of winemaking, where the bottle of wine is a reflection of the climate, the particular make up of the soil the grapes are grown in and the traditional winemaking techniques used to make the wines. Every year the wind, the rain and the sun interact differently with the grape vines and  the juice of the grape reflect these variations, and therefore the wine will be the sum of these conditions. In effect you are tasting the wind, the rain, the sun and the earth in that bottle of wine. But in under $20 bottles of wine the grapes are almost never sourced from one particular part of the vineyard, it’s actually rare that the grapes are sourced from the same vineyard, you can not have a sense of place, or terrior, in a wine that is sourced from many growing areas. What you do experience with terrior in the value priced wine is a more general sense of place, a Pinot Noir grown is France will make a different tasting Pinot than one grown in Oregon, and that Pinot will taste different than that grown in New Zealand and on and on.

to be continued….

CheapWineFinder’s Beginners Guide To Wine Part 2

How Do You Find The Right Wine For You?

The first group of wines most people come in contact with are what I call “supermarket wines”, these are wines that are mass-produced and made to a price point. They tend to taste the same year after year – nobody is running from one supermarket to another looking for the famed 2005 vintage of these wines, and the range in quality from “so-so” to “hey, this ain’t too bad”. They are not a bad starting point for your wine journey, the price is right and you can figure out if Cabernet Sauvignon,  Merlots or Chardonnay’s are your cup of tea. A sub-genre of the “supermarket wines” are the 2 Buck Chucks, Wal-Mart and 7-11 wines that sell for 2 or 3 bucks. How much does the bottle cost – or the cap – or the cardboard box it’s stored in? Or how much did it cost to be transported to your hometown and how much profit do they make per bottle?

As you can see, there is not much money in the equation for grapes and wine making. In times when grapes are cheap to buy, like now, these wines can be surprisingly drinkable, when grapes are more expensive, then you get what you pay for. In a side note , not all wines sold at the supermarket are “supermarket wines”, some stores also offer very interesting non mass produced wines.

Next we have the big box liquor stores. They have a wall full of coolers offering every beer you can think of and aisles and aisles of hard liquor, they also usually offer a large and varied selection of wines. These stores tend to have the best prices on wine, but are hit or miss on having staff available to help you find the right bottle of wine. A great many of the wines on the shelves are wines you would like, but mixed in among these wines are wines you would love, how do figure out which is which without buying every wine in the store? This is where “follow the winemaker” and “follow the importer” comes in handy, if you had a bottle of wine you enjoyed that was made by a certain winemaker, the chances are good that you will also enjoy another of the wines they make. Also with French and Spanish wines, if you look at the back label and see that it was imported by Eric Solomon or Kermit Lynch, there is a very good chance that it will be a top quality wine. If you do your homework the big box liquor stores can deliver some well-priced gems. But both the big liquor stores and the supermarkets have wine on their shelves that the Wine Buyers for these stores would never think of drinking, sometimes to get a quantity of a hot, in demand wine from the distributor they are required to take a certain amount of some not so hot wines. So be careful, not every wine on the shelf is worth trying.

And that brings us to the Wine Shop. Not so long ago if you went to one of these shops looking for a $10 bottle of wine you were treated as a nuisance, they made their money off the folks that came in to buy cases of expensive wine. But that has changed, they have figured out that today’s ten buck wine buyer is tomorrow’s steady customer if not the expensive case buyer. The wine that is available in almost all wine shops was personally tasted and selected by the owner of the shop, so if you sample one of their red wines and one of their white wines and really enjoy both, that might mean your palate and their palate have similar likes and dislikes. You now have a whole selection of wines that you had never heard of available to you, you’re gaining the shop owner’s 20 years of wine experience, all for the price of a bottle.

until the next episode……

CheapWineFinder’s Beginners Guide To Wine Part 1

Which Wines Do I Like? There Are So Many To Choose From!

New to wine? Where do you start? Which wines are the good wines? How do you find the wines that you will enjoy? Well it is a little complicated – say you had a Riesling at your Brother-in-Law’s that you really thought was good, but do you like all Rieslings? Rieslings come from Germany, France, South America, Washington, Oregon, California and Australia (and even more areas), and they taste different depending on where the grapes are grown. To make it more difficult there are sub-regions in each area that have their own take on the wine. The winemaker can make the Riesling in his own style, which adds different flavors than the vineyard next door. Plus, the price of the wine is a factor – more expensive wine tends to taste different than less expensive wine. Not always better, just different.

So you see, simply thinking that you might like Riesling isn’t enough, and I didn’t even mention that the same bottle of wine can vary in taste from year to year! So if you find one you like that was a 2006 vintage, it might not have the same oomph that got your attention in the 2007 vintage. The whole process is just as complicated for Pinot Gris, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, etc…

While the problem of finding the right wines may be complicated, the solution is rather easy – it’s drinking wine. You can read the wine magazines and learn about the wine makers and the growing regions, but you can read 100 magazines a still not know the important thing, and that is what does the wine taste like? You have to frequent wine tastings at your local wine shops. Throw wine parties – if you have a theme it can help with the learning curve – say the theme is everyone has to bring an under $15 bottle of red wine from Chile. If you have eight people over each bringing a different bottle, you will start to get a good feel for Chilean wine.

If you’re a beginner there is no need to go overboard with expensive wine, it’s better to start at the bottom and work your way up. Plus the cheaper the cost the more wine you can buy! What is a good price cut off? If you concentrate on wines that are under $10, you can find some really tasty wines but you do limit yourself. At under $10 you won’t find Pinot’s that taste like the real deal, you won’t find Napa wines, or Bordeaux wines. If you use under $20 as a limit you will get the whole wine spectrum. You generally can get better white wines priced under $10 than red wines, so if you’re a red wine lover be prepared to spend a bit more.

to be continued…..

Wine Tip: ABCs of Wine and Food Pairing

Wine Tip: ABCs of Wine and Food Pairing A simple system for devising great matches Pairing wine and food can be easy and fun if you follow this simple advice: Good news: when learning to match food and wine, you don’t have to learn complicated systems for selecting the right wine to enhance the food on the table. This is not rocket science. There is a simple way to make successful wine and food pairings, requiring only that you consider the weight of both the wine and the food when making a decision about what to pour with what you’ll be serving and eating.

Of course, it’s fun to experiment and fine-tune, and with experience you may be able to create spectacular matches that dramatically improve both the dish and the wine. But save those efforts for special occasions, and special wines. Because most of the time, you will spend more time talking with your guests than you will analyzing the pairings. So the first rule of thumb is to make sure the food is good and the wine is, too. Even if the match is not perfect, you will still enjoy what you’re drinking.

When it comes to selecting a wine to match with your food, don’t try to get too fancy. First, choose a wine that you would want to drink by itself. Then consider the weight of the dish and the wine, respectively. This is where common sense comes in. The old rule about white wine with fish and red wine with meat made perfect sense in the days when white wines were mostly light and fruity and red wines were mostly tannic and weighty. But today, when many California Chardonnays are heavier and fuller-bodied than most California Pinot Noirs and even some Cabernets, color coding does not always work.

How Do Reds Differ from Whites?

Red wines are distinct from whites in two main ways: tannins—many red wines have them, few white wines do—and flavors. White and red wines share many common flavors; both can be spicy, buttery, leathery, earthy or floral. But the apple, pear and citrus flavors in many white wines seldom show up in reds, and the currant, cherry and stone fruit flavors of red grapes usually do not appear in whites.

In the wine-and-food matching game, these flavor differences become mere subtleties. You can make better wine choices by focusing on a wine’s weight. Like human beings, wines come in all dimensions. To match them with food, it’s useful to know where they fit in a spectrum, with the lightest wines at one end and fuller-bodied wines toward the other end.

To help put the world of wines into perspective, we offer the following lists, which arrange many of the most commonly encountered wines into a hierarchy based on size, from lightest to weightiest. If you balance the wine with the food by choosing one that will seem about the same weight as the food, you raise the odds dramatically that the match will succeed.

OK, purists, you’re right: some Champagnes are more delicate than some Rieslings, and some Sauvignon Blancs are bigger than some Chardonnays— but we’re trying to paint with broad strokes here. When you’re searching for a light wine to go with dinner, pick one from the top end of the list. When you want a bigger wine, look toward the end.

Selected dry and off-dry white wines, lightest to weightiest:

• Soave, Orvieto, Pinot Grigio
• Off-dry Riesling
• Dry Riesling
• Muscadet
• Champagne, Prosecco, Cava and other dry sparkling wines
• Chenin Blanc
• Arneis
• French Chablis and other unoaked Chardonnays
• Rioja (white)
• Pinot Blanc
• Albariño
• Vermentino
• Verdejo
• Sauvignon Blanc
• Greco di Tufo
• Grüner Veltliner
• White Bordeaux
• White Burgundy
• Pinot Gris (Alsace, Tokay)
• Viognier
• Gewürztraminer
• Barrel-fermented or barrel-aged Chardonnay (United States, Australia)

Selected red wines, lightest to weightiest:

• Valpolicella
• Beaujolais Cru
• Dolcetto
• New Zealand Pinot Noir
• Burgundy
• Oregon Pinot Noir
• California Pinot Noir
• Cabernet Franc
• Barbera
• Chianti Classico
• Rioja
• Brunello di Montalcino
• Ribera del Duero
• Barbaresco
• Grenache/Garnacha
• Pinotage
• Merlot (United States)
• Malbec
• Barolo
• Bordeaux
• Petite Sirah
• Zinfandel
• Cabernet Sauvignon (United States, Australia)
• Rhône Syrah and Australian Shiraz

More common sense: Hearty food needs a hearty wine. A dish like braised pork belly, for example, or a lasagna Bolognese, will run roughshod over Pinot Noir or Valpolicella, making them taste insipid. Better to uncork a Malbec, Merlot or a Cabernet Sauvignon.

With lighter food, you have more leeway. Lighter wines will balance nicely against your chicken Caesar salad, sashimi platter or chilled pea soup, of course, but heartier wines will still show you all they have. Purists may complain that full-bodied wines “overwhelm” lighter foods, but the truth is that anything with a modicum of seasoning still tastes fine after a sip of a heavyweight wine.

These are the secrets behind some of the classic wine-and-food matches. Muscadet washes down a plate of oysters or crudo seasoned with sea salt because it’s just weighty enough to match the delicacy of a raw bivalve or slab of pristinely fresh fish. Cabernet complements short ribs or grilled lamb chops because they’re equally vigorous. Pinot Noir or Burgundy makes a better match with prime rib or pasta with sautéed porcini mushrooms because the richness of texture is the same in both the wine and the food.

To make your own classic matches, start off on the traditional paths and then deviate a little. Try a dry Champagne or a dry Riesling, which are on either side of Muscadet on our weight list, with raw or lightly cooked shellfish for a similar effect. Don’t get stuck on Cabernet with red meats—look up and down the list and try Zinfandel or Côtes-du-Rhône. Instead of Burgundy or Pinot Noir with beef or mushrooms, try a little St.-Emilion or Barbera. That’s the way to put a little variety into your wine life without straying too far from the original purpose.

But What About Sweet Wines? Some wine drinkers recoil at the thought of drinking an off-dry (sweet) wine with dinner, insisting that any hint of sweetness in a wine destroys its ability to complement food. In practice, nothing can be further from the truth. Think about how many Americans (and not just children) drink sweet tea, lemonade or soda with dinner. Why should wine be different? The secret to matching wine and food is balance.

So long as a wine balances its sugar with enough natural acidity, a match can work. This opens plenty of avenues for fans of German Rieslings, Vouvrays and demi-sec Champagnes. One of the classic wine-and-food matches is Sauternes, a sweet dessert wine, with foie gras—which blows the sugarphobes’ theory completely. The match works because the wine builds the richness of the wine upon the richness of the fatty liver.

The moral of the story is not to let some arbitrary rules spoil your fun. If you like a wine, drink it with food you enjoy and you’re bound to be satisfied.

(courtesy Wine Spectator)

2005 Skillogalee Riesling – $9

There is a Australian Video Blog that I watch, www.wineweek.com.au . The reviews are not super detailed , but Danny and Brad are very enthusiastic about Aussie wines and I get to keep up with the latest Australian slang. One thing they have been saying lately is to keep away from Australian and New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, they insist it tastes of “cat pee”,  the Aussie Riesling has really been on the money lately and it is a far better choice.

Which brings me to the 2005 Skillogalee Riesling, the grapes a sourced from a single vineyard, family owned estate in the Claire Valley and produced in small batches. The bottle I found must have been an end of the bin special, because the 2009 vintage has already been released. It seems that this is a very popular and award winning wine in Australia, but in checking the Web, I did not see much information on this Riesling from U.S. sources. The price for this wine in Australia runs between $15 and $20, so this is proof there are bargains to be had in this economy.

The color is a pale straw yellow. The nose is citrus, minerals and dusty slate. The flavor is smooth rounded pears and honey, muted grapefruit in the back of your palate. The mouth feel is slightly oily and the finish is light citrus that goes on and on and on.The five years of bottle age have been kind to this wine, all the different tastes are well blended, the sharper citrus flavors just dance around the edges. Not a sweet Riesling at all, very dry and very smooth, very tasty. At this price this wine is an amazing steal.

2005 Estancia Cabernet Sauvignon – $18

“We will sell no wine before its time.”

If you’re a geezer like me, you may remember that this was the slogan for Paul Mason wines when Orson Welles was their pitchman in the 1970s and early 80s. And what happened to Paul Mason wines? I don’t know for sure, but they must have fallen on hard times, because In 1986 Augustin Huneeus, a Chilean immigrant and then-president of Franciscan Vineyards, purchased the former Mason vineyard ranches near the Monterey town of Soledad on California’s Central Coast, and established them as the home of Estancia Winery.

The first replanting of the estate Pinnacles Vineyards was to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. I first started drinking Estancia’s Cabernet Sauvignon in the late 80s. (The fruit must have been sourced from other local growers, because it wasn’t until 1999 that almost 700 acres in Paso Robles were purchased as the vineyard home for Estancia’s Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Zinfandel, and Red Meritage.)

For the last 20 years, Estancia Cabernet Sauvignon has been my most reliable daily wine. I always keep a case or two in the cellar. When I first started drinking it, it was a steal at $8 a bottle. Today, the normal retail has drifted towards the $16-18 range, but it can occasionally be had for as little as $12 per bottle by the case if you regularly search wine sites for sales. However, even at retail it remains an excellent value.

The color of this wine is classic deep purple. The nose is rather unassuming, and gives little prediction of what is to come. In the glass, the wine starts out quite fruit-forward, with plenty of dark black cherry and currant flavors. The fruit is aided and abetted by toasted sweet oak. Structure is provided by moderate and well-balanced tannins (which become more pronounced after an hour or so in the decanter), and just a hint of pepper and minerality.

These tasting notes are based on the 2005 which I’m currently drinking, but it hardly matters. They must make this stuff in huge tanks or barrels and reserve a large quantity each year for blending, because Estancia Cabernet is the very definition of an unerring house style. I have no idea whether or not this Cab cellars well; it never stays there long enough.

For all of my devotion to Estancia Cabernet Sauvignon, I don’t find the same magic in the rest of their portfolio, which includes all of the usual suspects. The Chardonnay is nice enough, but doesn’t stand out from other similarly priced Chards. The Pinot Noir is thin and unremarkable. The Meritage shows some finesse, but is a poor value at twice the price of the Cabernet. ”

By Stephen Hawk

Chateau Chateau Skulls – $17

Old World Wines vs New World Wines, Terrior vs Manipulated, Earthy vs Fruity. There has been a bit of a shift happening in the wine world, Australian wine sales are off 23%, stores that used to stock 100 different Aussie labels, not stock half that amount. There has been a backlash in the Wine Press, Australian wines are often described as “fruit bombs” or “over extracted”. I don’t quite get the change in attitude, Australian wines are every bit as good now as they were when they were the hottest wines going. So, times and tastes change and R winery is rolling with the changes. The Chateau Chateau series of wine is intended to show the terroir, the effects of Australian soil and weather conditions on the Grenache grape. They have a line of single vineyard vines all done in an “Old World” style. Skulls is the entry level wine for Chateau Chateau and has a very cool label, look at it one way and it is a surreal painting of a man falling from a tree, look at it again and it is a human skull.

Skulls is a french style blend of 60% Grenache and 40% Mataro (another name for Mourvedre or Monastrell) no oak, aged in stainless steel. This is the entry level wine and it is not single vineyard,but sourced from vineyards all over South Australia. The nose is nice jammy cooked dark fruit with a touch of spice, the color is a see thru burgundy. The flavor has dark fruit in the lead, but it has mushroom, stewed meat element too. A very interesting transition on your palate from fruit to the savory flavors and then a nice long finish. All the flavors are well blended, nothing jarring, a slight bite from the tannins at first but that goes away with the second sip. All the delicious fruit you would expect from an Australian wine, but it still has that French funky, earthy thing going on, the best of both worlds.  Interesting flavors and the label is pretty cool, this one is a winner.

2008 Bibi Graetz Casamatta Rosso – $14

The name means “crazy house”, but it’s Italian finesse in a bottle. Hard to find a better value wine out of Tuscany, an exceptional territory.  This Sangiovese-driven wine has raspberry aromas that lead to medium bodied dark fruit flavors and fruity, tangy finish. Drink it with some Beef Ravioli!

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