Posts belonging to Category Barbera

DO NOT ADJUST YOUR CONTROLS. The foto is not in focus. The foreground grips control the horizontal and the vertical. Please ring the bell for service.

How was your holiday party? Ours was fab. Grab-bag wines, gag gifts and the popular and expanding re-gifting center charmed our guests. A Christmas party should be an open house with guests arriving at will. Lots off eats offset the preponderance of holiday cheer. We focused on wines and champagnes. There were no duds. Here is what we managed to keep track of.

Three Italian wines set the mark for winners bing bing bang. The first wine opened was the one in the center 2008 Cortones Brunello di Montalcino $45. It was quickly followed by the other two in sequence 2010 Tabarrini Montefalco Rosso $30, blending Sangiovese, Barbera and Sagrantino. 15 minutes later I was pulling the cork on the 2009 Viticoltori Migliozzi Casale Carinola Rampaniuci Falerno Massico $unk. While the sequence was accidental it was also perfect. The first two wines showed deep cherry flavors which encouraged the revelers to taste more wine! The third wine had the most body and the the most acid. It was the most serious and age worthy, forcing the madness to slow to a gentler pace. All three were just perfect for the holiday occasion where people who enjoy wine are involved. Each one was enjoyed by the throng in thongs. These wines proved the point that Italian wines are the most diverse with the greatest potential for giving gustatory satisfaction. Not one was over-ripe. Each was reasonably balanced, generally masculine. All three ably complemented the tamales, ham and lasagna.

2013 Big Table Farm Wirtz Garden Edelzwicker $28 (winery only): Rare and unusual white wine blending “riesling, pinot gris, gewurztraminer and more;” all grown organically on the Big Table Farm estate. This wine shows what can be done in the New World with decidedly Old World sensibilities. Medium weight, oily with figgy quince flavors. Delightful. Serve chilled and let it warm in the glass. Big Table Farm is a label to keep tracking.

NV Trouillard Extra Selection Brut $35 (Wine Expo): Plump strumpet champagne begging to hug your palate. Once this was tasted by a few it was quickly guzzled by the ambulatory throng in thongs. No wonder once you read about the careful handling in production, the first press juice only, and two years on the lees before bottling. Christ! This was too good for the guests!

As a wise man once said….keep the party hat on!! Happy New Year!!

This will help set the mood, no? It appears they’re having fun.

De-classified wines. Like outlaws they exist outside the mainstream. Wines which others have attempted to place on the margins of the inner sect. Untouchables. The lowest caste. The underclass. Warlocks to the Eloi. They are among a wine snob’s favorite topic. Wines banished from the world of civilized wine snobbery. (more…)

Ah, Italia! Land of the Tuscan sun, golden Mediterranean coasts, and…snow-covered fields? Yes, to those of you more familiar with an Italy of sun-baked hilltop towns or, less romantically, the oppressive summer heat of cities like Rome or Venice, it may seem odd to picture the country under a blanket of snow. But please suspend your disbelief for a moment and imagine Italy in the middle of February: the north-facing slopes of Piemonte are white, the wind is cold, and slush rains down periodically. Maybe not everyone’s idea of Paradise, but it is certainly perfect weather for tasting wine! (more…)

The Animal Planet show “Finding Bigfoot” is fun to watch except we never get to see the critter. Storage Wars, Antiques Roadshow, Bering Sea Gold would be nothing without the payoff. Show me the buried treasure. The same principle holds when hunting for worthy wines at even more worthy prices. Here is the premiere episode of Hunting Wines. (more…)

For some people wine is biblical, Old Testament, a holy gift from the earth. Hell dang tarnation. For some folks wine is a sacrament. For others… say heathen evolutionists, wine is folly, hedonistic, elixir of dadevilhisself. Disagreements of biblical proportions are old as sin. Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan faced off in a small town Tennessee courthouse what seems like a century ago in the so-called Monkey Trial. (more…)