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So last night, I ventured into the foray of online tasting, joining Master Sommelier Fred Dexheimer of Wines of Chile, 8 Chilean winemakers and over 50 wine bloggers from all over the place for a virtual flight of 8 Chilean Sauvignon Blancs. I hadn’t ever experienced anything quite like it, and the end result was three-fold:

1. I was exposed to several Chilean wineries not currently available here in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
2. I interacted with a lot of my peers for what was a fairly raucous time online.
3. I ended up slightly inebriated.

The set up was already established, yet I had to run down the street to pick up some food to go, thanks in large part to watching a movie before sitting down to taste (Milla Jovavich in “The Fourth Kind” – really disturbing stuff). Getting back from local restaurant Grandview Tavern with soup for the Mrs. (she wasn’t feeling well) and a salad for myself (at 6:55 pm to be exact) the tasting, which started at 7, was going to start without me. Throwing the wines open and on the table, and tossing the salad in front of me, I logged on just in time.

Master Sommelier Fred started things off, and we walked through each wine, spending 5-10 minutes with each winemaker, while the panel of winemakers and Fred fielded questions from the blogger chat stream, which moved faster than the cars at the Indy 500.

I had jokingly thought of pasting the transcripts to the blogger chats here, but I left the party after 1 hour and 15 minutes, and had about 6 or 7 pages of blurry blogger comments that meandered from the wines to pop culture references (some of the bloggers were commenting on how hot some of the winemakers were).

(Oh how one finds themselves at ease when wine is a-flowin’.)

Anyway, here are my overall notes:

1. Veramonte Sauvignon Blanc Reserva Casablanca Valley 2009. Grade=Outstanding. This wine was a great way to start, with a lot of vibrant acidity and bracing citrus notes. Some pronounced mineral at the finish makes this a great value.
2. Ventisquero Queulat Sauvignon Blanc Casablanca Valley 2009. Grade=Outstanding. Much more minerality than the Veramonte. Has a chalky element that reminds me of a Saint-Bris from Chablis. Some green apple and dried herbs add depth.
3. Undurraga T.H. Sauvignon Blanc Leyda Valley 2009. Grade=Outstanding. Reminds me of a Muscadet with its hints of sea salt and oyster shells. There are some notes of lemon peel and grapefruit pulp as well. Very nice.
4. Valdivieso Single Vineyard Wild Fermented Sauvignon Blanc Leyda Valley 2009. Grade=??? Everyone else thought this was corked, cooked or just off, but I could get the sense that was the wild fermentation talking. Had a Chardonnay that was going through WF in WA that had similar tones. Kind of Madeira meets Bourbon in the nose. Some orange blossom and buttered toast. Not much in the way of acidity. An SB for the David Lynch crowd. Just still trying to ascertain if this was intentional or not. If so, I give it a score of “outstanding.” If not, a score of “no, really?”
5. Santa Rita Medalla Real Sauvignon Blanc Leyda Valley 2009. Grade=Outstanding+. Grapefruit, haricot vert, dried herbs and flint in the nose and on the palette, with some guava and gooseberry notes as well. I really liked the acidic finish here.
6. Cono Sur Organic Sauvignon Blanc San Antonio Valley 2009. Grade=Outstanding+. Certainly the best value of the lineup, this SB showed some tart Meyer lemon, honeydew melon, some white flower and pineapple notes. The acidity here was a bit less sharp than the others, making it a bit rounder and mellower. Really nice.
7. Haras de Pirque Haras Estate Sauvignon Blanc Maipo Valley 2009. Grade=Outstanding. Reminds me of a good Graves, a bit rocky and minerally, but with some lemon meringue, citrus parfait, and fresh cut hay. The acid was mellower here too. Very nice.
8. Casa Silva Cool Coast Sauvignon Blanc Colchagua Valley 2009. Grade=Outstanding+. I almost liked this one the most. More exuberant mouthfeel than the others, at least to me. Some kiwi fruit, guava, gooseberry and grapefruit, yet finishing akin to a Pouilly-Fume, with some lime zest and honeydew. Quite good.

I had a lot of fun and want to thank Fred, the winemakers who spoke to us, the wine bloggers who participated and to all at Wines of Chile for including me in this event. I admit, I got a bit rambunctious (apologies for the more humorous/less professional remarks in the blogger chatroom). Get some wine in me, on top of a long day at the store, and I am ruined.

I received this package a few weeks ago, containing 8 Sauvignon Blancs from Chile, courtesy of Wines of Chile, a group dedicated to the promotion of, wait for it, Chilean wine. It is a given that Chile turns out great value, yet they also make some of the most incredible top-end wines on the market today (Montes Folly, Almaviva, Don Maximilano from Concha y Toro, just to name a few).

Turns out I’ve been invited to participate in a virtual tasting with Fred Dexheimer, Master Sommelier and WoC special guest host, tonight online. I’ll have my notes up tomorrow, but you can follow along on Facebook or Twitter. On Twitter, you can follow the hashtags #SBChile. Pretty cool - I am getting excited about it, even though I get to do it at my very own kitchen table, with my Mrs., my 8 furry children, and some pan-seared shrimp and scallops to boot.

Let’s hear it for the Internet (thank you Al Gore!).

My Cutting Edge rep, Lauren, dropped off some samples of Cartlidge & Browne’s other winery, Lot 205, perhaps two weeks ago, and I am just now getting to them. The inventory at our store has kept things consumed in numbers and everything else has been in a holding pattern, but here we go:

Lot 205 Chardonnay California 2008. Grade=Average. Obviously, I am not going to like this one too much given my slight disdain for most California Chardonnay, but this does have some nice moments of creaminess and tropical fruit flavors. It’s okay. But I have a lot of Chardonnay on the shelf and okay ain’t enough.

Lot 205 No. 1 Red California 2007. Grade=Outstanding. I think Lauren told me this was mostly Petite Sirah. It’s got really nice notes of red and black fruit aromas and flavors, a juicy blast of plum and black raspberry with a slight cinnamon-y thing on the end. Pretty good for the under $10 set.

Lot 205 Merlot California 2006. Grade=Outstanding. A very nice, very pleasing Merlot with soft black cherries, plum and pluots. There is a slight pomegranate and blackberry note in there as well. Soft tannins make this very easy to drink.

Over the weekend, our DEP’s tastings featured some of my favorite wines – Rhone varieties. One of the questions that I got during our Friday night tasting at our Fort Thomas store was “what do you mean by Rhone varieties?” Obviously, the wine geek in me had been turned loose and I needed to explain myself a bit better.

Most of us wine geeks speak of wine in terms of French geography. When talking about Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot, we are talking about “Bordeaux,” Chardonnay or Pinot Noir – “Burgundy,” and Syrah, Grenache or Mourvedre – “Rhone.”

We usually dedicate an entire weekend to these grapes, with part one being dedicated to the white grapes like Viognier, Roussanne, Marsanne and subsequent blends, and part two, focusing on GSM and other notable grapes like Cinsault, Carignan and others. Modeled after the pioneering group of Rhone-enthusiasts the Rhone Rangers, we try to help our customers better understand that Syrah is not just a cheap grape variety producing such bargains as Yellow Tail and Rosemount, but can be remarkably structured and complex wines, and still be affordable too.

As a primer, there are three major red and three major white grapes grown in the Rhone. For the reds, it is Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre. Grenache is one of the most cultivated red grapes on the planet, though its sibling, Syrah, has been more successful thanks in part to the aforementioned Yellow Tail, but also to the prestige of Penfolds Grange (one of the most celebrated and highly-acclaimed wines on earth). And Mourvedre, that dark oddball that is fast becoming a hit in its own right in a little southern Spanish region called Jumilla.

As for the whites, Viognier, Roussanne and Marsanne are the big three, though most of them are still somewhat misunderstood.

As far as the actual Rhone Valley in France, a region leading you toward the Mediterranean coastline, the area is divided by the mighty Rhone River, which flows from German border (where it is the Rhine) west and then south, draining into the Mediterranean near Marseilles. Divided into the Northern and Southern portions, this geographic separation is tantamount to understanding these grapes somewhat. In the Northern Rhone, Syrah is the sole red grape variety allowed to be grown, with some wines from Hermitage and Cote-Rotie spiced up with the slight addition of white grapes like Viognier or Roussanne. These wines are cooler-climate wines, grown in rocky soil and on precisely-positioned vineyard plots. These traits lend to their massive structure, dense minerality and notes of roasted game and rich earth. The wines of the Southern Rhone are more blends, with Grenache being the dominant grape, both in Grenache Noir and Grenache Blanc. The most famous appellation in Southern Rhone is Chateauneuf du Pape, or New House of the Pope. A commemorative wine meant to celebrate the arrival of Pope Clement V, who was the only pope not to reside in the Vatican, but in the Rhone city of Avignon. The blend was initially permitted to incorporate all the grape varieties grown for wine, including 7 red and 6 white (technically 7 of each if you count both white and black Grenache). These days most everyone uses the simple G(renache)-S(yrah)-M(ourvedre) blend, with the exception of Chateau Beaucastel, who still uses all of them.

Syrah has become the dominant grape in Australia, where it is known as Shiraz, and it also favors well under that moniker in South Africa. California has proven to be well-suited for the Rhone grapes as well, while Grenache and Mourvedre dominate in Spain. As for the whites, you can find Viognier in California, Washington State, Australia, Chile, and Italy.

And as a slight interjection of bias, the Rhone grapes are doing extremely well in Washington state, particularly Syrah. The wines of Gramercy Cellars, Cayuse, K Vintners, Doyenne, McCrea and Bunnell are among the finest producers of Syrah in the world. One of the most stirring events I ever attended was a Syrah seminar with Gramercy Cellars winemaker Greg Harrington and Mike Sauer, vineyard manager and owner of one of Washington’s most hallowed Syrah sites, Red Willow Vineyard. Just days after Washington State’s father of wine, David Lake had lost his battle with cancer, Mike spoke of their planting the first Syrah vines together there on that hillside, tears in his eyes, and you could taste all that they had hoped you could, the pedigree of Northern Rhone, the “terroir” of Red Willow, the love of the Rhone.

I urge you to give these varieties a try, and hopefully you too will discover some amazing wines, that just happen NOT TO BE Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot or Chardonnay.

The holidays always seem to sneak up on me, as if stealthily approaching to punk me when I am dropping trough or something, and then BOO! And I piss all over myself. Such was actually not the case this year for Mother’s Day. Call it my Blackberry assistance, call it my wifey always having my back, Mother’s Day was in perpetual planning when my mother, now close to 70, told us she was working all day and thus, putting the kibosh on our plans to take her out to dinner, at least on Mother’s Day.

My mom has always been a hard worker. That ethic has been pummeled into my psyche from a wee lad, though I went through a spell of slackerdom in my twenties that was quelled by a blistering case of divorce (wife #1). My sister and I didn’t really have to do chores growing up though, because Mom worked 2^nd shift, and Dad usually didn’t get home until late, leaving my sister and I to fend for ourselves, which we did, and spent the majority of the time alone tormenting each other like Tom and Jerry or Wiley Coyote and the Road Runner.

My mom had a toughness and a do-it-yourself mentality that I learned and carry with me to this day. She is a strong, independent woman who has had her share of heartbreaks, like most of us, watching her mother die from cirrhosis (she never drank a drop in her life) or my father beaten down by diabetes until he died of heart failure while in a diabetic coma. Death was a strange accompaniment to our lives growing up, and though my mom wasn’t the reserved type – she was never afraid to say what was on her mind – she kept us pushing through each day, surviving it all together.

I credit my mom with a lot of my grape affections, thanks in large part to the really ancient grape “tree” that sat behind our house on Woods Drive, and when we were really little (my sister and I), Mom made this awesome grape jelly from the grapes, which looked like purple golf balls (almost), and my sister and I lived off jelly sandwiches the rest of the year each time she made it.

My mom was a huge supporter of anything I did, despite the fact that once I reached my twenties, I was a longhaired degenerate who was trying his damnedest to self-destruct. I was playing the rock singer in a Heavy Metal band, staying up all night, drinking, partying as hard as I could. I knew my mom didn’t like it all that much, but she knew I wanted to be a big rock star. I did make her a promise that if I hit 29 and didn’t have a record contract, I was out of the biz and back to college.

I kept my promise.

Returning home, I was able to reconnect with my mom. Even though I always called or wrote to her, at least once a week, a lot happened while I was away. She had remarried, divorced, lost her house, her father (my Grandpa B.) passed away, she had been laid off – I wanted to be around for her. Mom was tough, she had been through a lot, but still, I was the man of the family.

Ultimately, I’ve moved away again, though only an hour away this time. But my job and my life keep me busy, and keep me from being too close to my family again. I love my mom, and wish a lot of the times that I hadn’t gone away, chasing ridiculous dreams. Somehow though, through all the bullshit I’ve thrown my mom’s way, she still says she’s proud of me.

I’ve tried to turn out to be the man my parents hoped I’d be. Sometimes, I think I have succeeded. Other times, not so much. But the strength and perseverance I learned from my mom has kept my head on straight and my feet on the ground. And my love for her homemade grape jelly transformed into my career in and passion for wine.

Thanks Mom! And Happy Mother’s Day.

My love affair with coffee is well-renowned amongst my family and friends. I typically satisfy any carnal cravings I have for the stuff at a number of local Starbucks (I can hear the loud gasping from all the coffee purists out there already). But hey, I like Starbucks. True, they are the McDonald’s of coffee, but when I live against the clock the majority of the day, I can get my “unmasculine European coffee” fix rapidamente. (Thank you Danny Aiello from the movie “Hudson Hawk” – still one of my favorite movies).

There are other great coffee joints I stop in, though not nearly as frequently. There’s Reality Tuesday in Park Hills, KY and the Bean Haus in Covington’s Mainstrasse, but there are so many Starbucks that I can go to at any given time during my running between the DEP’s stores every day, that I usually opt to get my fix there.

Yet one of my favorite coffees is the Cinnamon Hazelnut blend from local roasters Seven Hills Coffee. Our stores sell many of their coffee’s (including our own special DEP’s Blend, which is Highlander Grogg + Cinnamon Hazelnut), and I have been a huge fan since schlepping their wares at my previous employ, the infamous Chateau Pomije Wine Store in Cincinnati. The Cinnamon Hazelnut blend was our house coffee there, and that was the first thing you smelled in the morning when you walked in the door.

Being a massive cinnamon fiend, I was in heaven (though sometimes it felt more like Hell).

These days, since I am so much more in a rush than I’d like to be, I either placate my coffee jones with Starbucks’ new Dark Cherry Mocha, or I just grab one of those damn Mocha Frappuccino drinks you get cold – I think I am the only one at our store that buys them, customer or employee.

Coffee has become my one true vice, since I quit smoking maybe 13 years ago, and I am only drinking for a living, and my philandering has been reigned in successfully by the Mrs. (I am not walking the same path as a-holes Tiger Woods, Jesse James and David Boreanaz). Nope, my big weakness is simply coffee, espresso, and anything blessed with a ridiculous amount of caffeine. As the commercial goes, “I love to get a shot of that wonderful stuff.”

Cheers!

One of the Washington state wineries I have always been big on has been Hogue Cellars. Back in October, as part of the Washington Wine Road Trip 2010, I visited Hogue, and was given a pretty profound lecture on the correlation between high phenolics and quality levels by Hogue’s red winemaker Jordan Ferrier.

In layman’s terms, phenolics are, according to Wikipedia, :

In organic chemistry, phenols, sometimes called phenolics, are a class of chemical compounds consisting of a hydroxyl group (-OH) bonded directly to an aromatic hydrocarbon group. The simplest of the class is phenol (C₆H₅OH).

Hogue has been accumulating data on phenols for the past decade in the hopes that their data arrays might show them something tangible to help make better wines. By monitoring for optimum levels of phenols in the grapes, they could determine that high levels of phenols clearly meant richer, fuller bodied wines. And it is truly the most evident in the Reserve line, yet can be tasted in their everyday Columbia Valley series as well.

What used to be called their “Fruit Forward” series, their value line of wines represents the bulk of their production (over 650K cases of wine annually). These wines reflect the overall objective of the Washington wine industry, and that is to “overdeliver.”

I wanted to sample through a few of the wines and illustrate what they have to offer, culminating notes from my Washington trip and recent tastings at home as well:

Hogue Cellars Red Table Wine 2007. Grade=Outstanding. So this is pretty new, a blend of Merlot, Cab, Syrah and Malbec, this red has some plush tannins and firm grip for an under $10 bottle of wine. A bit of mineral and rust with some black cherries, peat, and blackberry tart notes.

Hogue Cellars Merlot Columbia Valley 2006. Grade=Outstanding. I always think of Washington as the place in the States that got Merlot right. Bigger and more expressive than its California counterparts, with black cherry, plum and touches of mint. Well-balanced acidity and surprising fullness make this a great value.

Hogue Cellars Syrah Genesis 2005. Grade=Amazing. I love Washington state Syrah, and this one, which we had on a closeout shelf, was surprisingly still rich and concentrated, displaying lovely notes of blueberry compote, raspberry jam, gingerbread cookies and white pepper, with a bit of rhubarb pie for good measure. Delicious.

Hogue Cellars Merlot Reserve 1998. Grade=Amazingⁿ. I was blown away by the power this wine displayed, with thick, opulent dark fruit, aromas of hickory smoke, charcoal, violets in bloom, and a bit of black cherry cobbler. This full-bodied monster just stains the crap out of the glass and your teeth, and the finish resonates infinitely. Glad I still have one more bottle.

Hogue Cellars Merlot Reserve 1999. Grade=Amazingⁿ. I should have gotten more of this one, but this was equally as good as the 1998, with equal levels of dark, dense, rich black fruits, heady aromas of toasted oak, some creamy berry, freshly tilled earth, and loganberry jam. Just beautiful.

Definitely check the wines of Hogue out for yourselves. They will certainly surprise you.

Was thinking about my agenda for this month, and what I hope to accomplish, with my job, my blog, and my life. Self-reflection is a crutch on which I seem to be overly reliant. Got a lot of plans for the next two months as far as the blog – a trip to Washington D.C. for the Palm Bay Grand Tasting, day-trips tosome wineries here in Kentucky, and perhaps a trip to the Bourbon Trail and my whiskey nirvana, Jack Daniels, down in Tennessee.

My job is always a day-to-day endeavor, never really knowing if things are good or not, if I have a job or not, or a career or not. Hey, you never know in this business.

Life is the ultimate adventure, and the goal is ambitious but plain – get my wife and I some more leisure time, travelling whether on day-trips, weekend getaways or a real vacation. Anything is possible, right?

In the meantime, I just put up a Facebook page for the blog. You can check it out here. It will be full of the kind of weirdness you should expect from me, though I will be plugging a lot of my friends’ blogs, as well as posting some YouTube frivolity and ranting tirelessly against HR 5034.

Tonight I need to tend to clearing out some samples, so I hope to have some of my tasting notes up in the next few days.

Cheers!

Trying to recover from every retailer’s favorite masochism exercise – inventory – I have been dreaming about mathematicians sheering my manhood with a dead porcupine carcass and all I want to do is sing “3 is a magic number.”

As a diversion, I was reading various news bytes online, and came across a pretty mindblowing article about a chef who ended up battling cancer – of his tongue. He literally lost his ability to taste anything. I couldn’t even imagine, being that my sense of taste is crucial to my job – yet to be a chef, running your own restaurant, and not having the ability to know what you are putting on the plate would have to be the scariest thing you could face.

Grant Achatz is his name, chef of Alinea in Chicago, and doctors told him that he would have to lose ¾ of his tongue or he’d die. Refusing to quit, he found a doctor who treated him and saved his tongue and taste buds, and after several months, he got his taste back, and though there were drawbacks to his treatment, he is alive and well, and living his dream.

The article really struck a chord with me. I remembered my father asking me once how I would feel if I had lost my eyesight. For the life of me, I don’t recall why he asked me that question – I think I was 11 or 12 years old at the time – but I never forgot that prospect. When I played drums, I used to practice in the dark, in case I ever did go blind. God knows, I should have never turned on the lights when beating those things – I wasn’t very good – but the whole “don’t-know-what-you-got-till-it’s-gone” notion (cue the band Cinderella) is a place I don’t ever want to end up. I don’t want to take anything for granted.

Yet the pitfall we all end up, usually without realizing it, is that we do take things for granted, and we don’t know how good we have it until we lose it in some fashion. Now that isn’t to say that there are those folks who have nothing to begin with and, well, I am drifting away from my point now.

I guess what I am trying to say is cherish everything you do have, don’t take things for granted, and fight with all you have to be happy and survive.

Sorry for getting all New-Age-y again. Hope to get back to some wine stuff tomorrow.

Last year, perhaps around August or September was when my RNDC/Cumberland sales rep informed me that they were picking up Bookwalter wines from Washington state. I was a huge fan of Bookwalter many moons ago, yet here in Kentucky, there was a leviathan retailer downstate that had swallowed up all the cool Washington state wines and we in Northern KY were unable to acquire them (or hardly anyone else aside from Hogue and Ste. Michelle). Well that fact was all in the past, and soon, John Bookwalter was in our store pouring his bad-ass selections, including the Subplot NV, the Foreshadow Cabernet Sauvignon 2006, Foreshadow Merlot 2006, and Protagonist 2006 (which I would name my #1 Wine of 2009 later on).

John was also instrumental in helping me get on the Washington Wine Road Trip, which opened my eyes even further to all the incredible Washington State wines that we weren’t able to get and sell – YET. Wines from Owen Roe, Sparkman, Buty, Bunnell, McCrea, Walla Walla Vintners, Cote Bonneville – the list went on and on.

But I am not going to rehash my massive love affair with Washington Wines, or my indebtedness to John Bookwalter. No, I want to talk to you about one of his new wines, the Bookwalter Conflict Conner-Lee Vineyard 2007 – an absolutely remarkable red blend that I think ranks amongst America’s best wines right now.

This is the very first vintage of this single-vineyard beauty, and we were privileged to get a sample bottle a few months back. Opening it with the staff, it was almost like we sneaked a peek into the vaults of Fort Knox, or caught a glimpse of Angelina Jolie’s knickers (while she was wearing ‘em).

Obviously, this dark, brooding monster was young, needing ample time in the bottle to mellow and mature, yet the components were all still present, still resounding, still glorious.

Comprised primarily of Conner-Lee vineyard fruit (91%), the remainder of the blend was derived from fruit from the McKinley Springs vineyard in Horse Heaven Hills and the Ciel du Cheval vineyard in Red Mountain. You could argue this as being something akin to Chateau Petrus, with its predominant Merlot component (66%), finishing up the blend with Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.

The wine was aged for twenty months in both new and once-used French oak barrels, and the resulting wine shows off a dark ruby/purple color, almost opaque, with aromas of perfumed blackberry and black currants rising out of the glass. The black fruits continue on the palate, displaying their jammy, juicy, rich complexity integrated with a mélange of mocha, espresso bean, black truffle, anise, cedar, tobacco smoke, dusty earth, peat, milk chocolate, vanilla bean, and toasted oak. My grade: AMAZING!

I would have to say I am a true disciple of Bookwalter wines, as well as the wines of Washington state, and I look forward to John and the folks at Bookwalter continuing the path they have set out on with this Conflict.