What You Like in a Wine

Wine enjoyment is a personal thing. The more you drink the more focused you become in looking for the perfect wine at a bargin price. I have been drinking wine for at least two thirds of of my life. Appreciating what I have been drinking is another thing, that being about the last twenty five years. The time I spent in Argentina, three years, is really the time it was cultivated with table wine at sixty three cents per litre. The most expensive, as I recall, was in the vicinity of $3/ bottle. We used to have wine at lunch, usually one glass with our food and the remainder half wine and half seltzer. Think it was to keep you from falling asleep when you went back to work.
Nowdays I look first for varietal or type, origin, year and if its in the price point I am looking for (afford). I like red. Used to be into Chardonnay the oaky, buttery soft kind, old world. But now I like the chewy reds. Zin in particular. I like it to be deep dark reddish purple with a lot of odor (nose). When you take a whiff you think of what it will be like when you try your first mouthful. Sometime I have to watch out that I don't drool. The first sip is wonderful. A whole lot of things happen. I try and relate to all the things that I have read about, smoke, tobacco, slate but I can't quite go there as if I have ever tasted smoke, don't remember it, have smelled smoke but not tasted it. Think you have to have your own relationship with the wine and describe it as you relate to it. To me when I experience a good one I either write it down or remember the label. For sure I will make a trip in the near future to buy more.
One in particular that is worth the $$, Cline Ancient Vines Zin. They have a few different labels, look for Ancient Vines. Old or Ancient Vines have more to do with the farming method, dry, than the age of the vines. Usually priced around $12 to $15 per bottle. When I do a good bottle of wine I don't want to mess it up with food, experience the wine. Good way to do this wine is with a quince base spread, blue cheese (soft type) and a ritz cracker. Spread the cracker with a bit of blue cheese and a dolop of quince spread. Eat the cracker thing first, and follow with a good gulp of the wine. Keep the wine in your mouth for at least a minute before swallowing, the experience will linger and you can relate to what you thought the wine was going to be like. I think it is quite complex with lots of differnet flavors. The blue cheese, quince spread, and ritz cracker was something that someone told me about and have passed it on to quite a few friends who have attested that it is a good combination with the wine showing its quality and characteristics. Remember to write down the name or better yet lift the label off and put it in a scrapbook. Next post will let you know how we do the "lifting" of labels... cheers

Wine Making

My dad made wine back in the UP of Michigan when I was growing up. He tried just about everything and as I remember it was all pretty nasty stuff. His favorite, I think was Choke Cherry wine. As kids we used to try and eat these little red berries from bushes that grew almost every where. The result was probably the reason for the name. Many Sat. afternoons I spent with him picking berries. Had red stains on my hands that had to wear off, no soap would even make a dent in the color. He used to "cook" the stuff in the basement of our house in Quinnesec, Mi. Used 25 gallon crocks and covered them with burlap bags in the fermenting stage. Smelled pretty ripe. He used to save gallon jugs and that is how he would do the secondary fermentation. Made his own airlocks with plastic tubes tied in a "U" shape with one end in the cork in the jug and the other pointing up. He added a little water to the tube and it acted like a floor drain allowing the gas to escape without letting air back into the jugs. The process took quite some time. He used to go down in the basement after supper to "sample" the wine to see how it was doing. This usually took an hour or so.. always came back up smiling and as the season progressed think his nose got a little redder. Anyway by the time the wine was finished it always stayed in the gallon jugs and the corks were replace with the original screw caps. Not many full jugs left as the sampling process took its toll on the finished product. I can remember my uncle coming over on a Sat night with his wife to play cards with my parents and ny dad would take out a "jug" and pour a glass and say "wadaya think Marv" my uncle would swirl the wine in his mouth for at least a minute and invariably reply "Good Stuff". He always had a bottle of "Dago Red" that he got from his wife's dad and the procedure was reversed with my dad going on about how good it was. It comes back to your taste, if that is all you know you can pick out the good (bad) from the not so good (really bad).
I started with buying about $200.00 worth of carbouys, primary fermenter, hydrometer,airlocks and misc items. Also started with a kit which is a no brainer. You start with concentrated juice, add yeast, check for specific gravity until you get the proper number then rack (change carbouys) Monitor for the right number, clairify and bottle. Whole process takes about 2.5 months and you have pretty good wine. It used to cost me about $2.50/bottle finished product and the wine is comprable to a $12-$15 bottle of wine at the store. You can do a little messing around with the process like adding oak chips, or vanilla, fresh fruit during the ferment stage to put a personal touch to the wine. Your own labels also add to the uniqueness. For my stepdaughters wedding we had wine and cheese baskets for all the out of town guests in their rooms at the hotel with a label that I made honoring the special day.... anyway try it, great hobby and if you like wine as much as we do.. its a hellava lot cheeper.. we do at least a bottle/day between us and at $9.00 ea = $270/mo vs $3.00/day (homemade) = $90/mo cheers

Notes from Last Night

about a week ago saw an ad $10 for 3 bottles.. was shopping for fruit and saw the display, Australian Cab/Shiraz. Kept looking and came around again and noticed the year 2002.. damm thought most stuff that old has got to be OK and at a little over $3/bottle what the hell... couldn't wait to get home and get the cork out... should wait I know, breathing stuff, but I poured a bit into a "no tip" (wine glass with no stem) color was deep purple, have learned from the past that anything that looks that good and is a dry wine should be drinkable. Taste was great, like a good wine should, could almost chew it. Hard to do it but left it alone for about 15 minutes while I put the other 2 bottles in our wine cooler. Ya I know red wine at room temp.. not for this guy I like it chilled, any wine. Where I grew up in the UP of Michigan there was a bar on the Nort side of town called Bimbo's, yes he was Italian and for sure the God Father type but a great guy. The drink of choice for most locals was a glass of Fortissimo poured from the gallon jug it came from and kept in the cooler under the bar... also no tip glasses, actually water glasses with a green and red stripe around the glass, italian I think. Plus it was an 8 oz glass and if you BS'd with Bimbo for a while and had a porketta sandwich he usually topped it off for free. Special customers also got some "skin", pig skin that is, from the pig that was roasted in the basement of the bar to go with the sandwich.. anyway back to the down under wine, Good Stuff, I went back and bought a case $40, which you can't beat with a stick, put it all in the cooler and two in the ice box (refrigerator)... this is the first attempt at this so maybe doing a no no but the wine is BoonaRoo and I got it at Sprouts ... it is definately worth $3.33