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Okanagan – the Next Kobe Beef? We have all heard of Kobe beef. It comes from very pampered Japanese cattle that are massaged daily. A local Japanese restaurant charges over $100 for a Kobe steak dinner. Needless to say the frugal Wine Witch has never sprung for it. In British Columbia there is Okanagan beef which comes from cattle that are fed a liter of local red wine the last 90 days before they are “processed”. Janice Ravndahl got inspiration from watching Gordon Ramsey feed his pigs beer. Local chefs rave over the “pre-marinated” beef. Stay tuned.
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The 2007 Murphy-Goode Cabernet Sauvignon does very well on the Wine Witch “bang for the buck” scale. Like more expensive wines, this one has a great nose, and an unfolding beginning, middle, and end. Fair warning – if you are in the chewing on a tree camp of Cab, you will not agree with this assessment.
The Wine Witch is all about taking the hocus pocus out of the enjoyment of wine (I know, I know – a REALLY bad pun). Here are three very prevalent myths that just ain’t so.
Great wines have great legs – First of all what are legs? Legs are little streams running down the inside of the glass after it is swirled. We have all witnessed somebody holding up their glass to the light and declaring the wine has “great legs”. The implication here is that is also a great wine. Not necessarily true. Legs are telling you more about the alcohol content of the wine, but next to nothing about how it will taste. Wines with more alcohol are thicker and stickier and therefore cling to the glass better.
This was the second of the new Sauvignon Blancs that we sampled over the long holiday weekend. I gotta say it was a disappointment. Not sure if I over anticipated or it was just that dull.
Well hubby and I are back to tasting some new wines. We had two new ones over the long 4th of July weekend. They are both Sauvignon Blancs. I know, I know – the Wine Witch drinks a LOT of Sauvignon Blanc. Can’t help myself. I am like a bee to honey with this grape. I promise to widen the net over the next several weeks.
Lately we have not been experiencing too many new wines to let you know about. It’s a dirty job, but we are working are way through some whites that have been laying around to make room for some new wines. We do have a bottle of Cupcake Sauvignon Blanc that we will crack open in the next day or two. I know the name is just too precious, but the wine is getting a lot of buzz, so stay tuned.
A persistent theme in this blog is the difficulty of finding good Pinot Noir at our $15 or less price point. Do not get me wrong. There are plenty of them available. Sadly not too many excellent or even good ones. I think the movie Sideways did to Pinot Noir what the “anything but Cabernet” movement did to Merlot. To satisfy the growing demand, a lot of grape juice from ordinary vineyards was manipulated and tortured into a mass market product.
As you may know the Wine Witch does troll the internet looking for some interesting snippets to share with you. There were a bunch of them this week. One on a new sales and packaging scheme that has taken off in the U.K.. The rest were announcements of some very unexpected personalities putting their names on wine.
I know this is the second red Zin in a row. However, a new friend to Wine Witch asked for recommendations for Zinfandels under our $15 cap and I have been trying to oblige. Like Pinot Noir this can be a bit of a challenge, but I have found a few if you look through the Wine Witch archives. Before I get into the wine at hand, if you are willing to go for the mid $20′s, I highly recommend some of the single vineyard offerings from Seghesio.
The Wine Witch has a dilemma here. California Zinfandels are usually huge wines with a lot of fruit and heat and alcohol north of 14%. The 2007 Castle Rock Zinfandel is not a typical California Zin, but I liked it.
Recently when I realized that my husband and I did not drink much Merlot, I also realized that Pinot Grigio suffered the same fate with us. Pondering this state of affairs, I think I figured out what happened. Back in the late 70′s when the wine culture began to really take hold in the U.S., it was all about Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. These are generally not shy wines and the public wanted some alternatives. The next big wave of wine was then Merlot and Pinot Grigio. When anything becomes popular, there is a rush to fill the market with similar products. Thus began the era of the boring Merlot and Pinot Grigio. Do not misunderstand me. There are some really wonderful examples of these grape out there. You just need to kiss a lot of frogs to get to the good ones.
The Vionta Albarino just snuck in under our $15 cap. In fact, you probably need to find a sale to keep it under. While I enjoyed this wine, I think you can get more bang for $15 so I rated it 3 stars. If it were around $10, I would have rated it higher.
