The Award-Winning Wine:

Bianchi 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon

Reason for Reviewing:

Bianchi 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon is one of...

Sad sign of the times: collectors are resorting to selling their precious wine in order to raise capital. Lisa Baertlein (reuters.com) writes:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Wine cellars have been taking a hit from the global credit crisis and it isn't because the owners of rare bottles are drinking more -- it's because they have been selling to raise cash.
 
The selling started with mortgage brokers and has moved to Wall Street as owners turn their collections of coveted vintages into liquid assets.
 
"People need money. Even richer people need money sometimes," Vinfolio.com founder and Chief Executive Stephen Bachmann told Reuters on Monday.
 
In the last few weeks, private collectors submitted offers to sell $10 million worth of wine to Vinfolio, a San Francisco-based company that buys and sells wine online. Normally the company has about $6 million offered to it.

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Tags: melgab, wine, collection, recession, funds, south-africa, South Africa

Brilliant article from the recent issue of Wine Spectator written by Matt Kramer (winespectator.com):

Recently I found myself in one of those wine wrangles that, truth to tell, I usually try to avoid. (Check out any wine chat board on the Internet if you've got a taste^? for this sort of thing.)
 
The wrangle was with, natch, a winemaker^?, while at a social event. It involved the winemaker's assertion that "fine wine is art." I pointed out, as modestly as I could, that there's no denying that nature surely doesn't make wine on its own, let alone fine wine (vinegar^? is more like it). I then went on to say that fine wine is, at best, a high craft both in the vineyard^? and the cellar^?.
 
Probably, if I had stopped there, the discussion would have proved amicable. But I took the matter one step further. (You're shocked, I know.) I submitted that saying that winemaking, and therefore its result, is "art" was self-aggrandizing. You can imagine how that was received.
 
Now, I admit that the self-aggrandizing bit was a low blow. Still, it's true. If winemakers can get you, me and, especially, their employers to see them as artists, you know what'll happen: Their salaries will rise, and producers, for their part, will start pricing wine as "art." And you know what that means.
 
So why isn't fine wine "art"? The answer is surprisingly simple. Art is creation; wine is amplification. The big^? difference between an artist and a winemaker is that an artist starts with a blank sheet while a winemaker works with the exact opposite. A grape arrives at the winery^? with all the parts included, a piñata stuffed with goodies, just waiting to be cracked open.
 
Is there a craft to doing that? You bet there is. But where an artist conceives of something out of the proverbial thin air, no winemaker anywhere in the world can do any such thing.
 
For example, when my wine heroine Lalou Bize-Leroy bought the former Domaine^? Noëllat in Vosne-Romanée and transformed it into Domaine Leroy, she did not create her magnificent wines from scratch. It was all right there in the hallowed ground and old vines^? of her newly acquired pieces of Richebourg and Romanée St.-Vivant. She didn't create something from nothing. Quite the opposite.
 
Fine wine is not creation. It is refinement. If it were otherwise, then everybody would be "creating" Lafite Rothschild or La Tâche or any other wine masterpiece of singular, irreproducible expression and high price. Counterfeiting aside, I don't see anybody doing that, do you?
 
They don't because they can't. That's precisely why fine wine is not art. It comes from all the forces that create a particularity of site. Great winemakers?which is to say, expert practitioners of winecraft?tease what they can from the sites that are available to them by planting the right grapevines, growing them astutely, harvesting the fruit at an ideal moment (a problematic issue today given some winemakers' and critics' preferences for ever greater ripeness) and handling the fermented juice^? in the cellar with deft control.
 
This is no small charge, and I, for one, do not seek to diminish it in any way. But art? Not a chance. The poet E.E. Cummings put his finger on it better than anyone else: "A world of made is not a world of born." Wine is no more a blank canvas than the Grand Canyon.
 
Why does this distinction matter? Because abstract though it is, if winemakers and, yes, wine lovers, see wine as art, then the essential connection between what a grape expresses from its site and what we expect is severed. If a winemaker is an "artist," then he or she, by artistic right, can and should modify the result to suit a personal vision separate from a "mere" expression of place.
 
However, if the finest winemaking is seen as a high craft, rather than art, the expectation changes subtly yet substantively. Where art presumes a blank slate upon which a personal vision necessarily is writ large, the notion of craft is more deferential. Like great parenting, it's a guardianship of something already largely complete. The goal is refinement and amplification of what's inherent. Think of what happens when parents do otherwise.
 
So it is with wine. All sorts of technological deconstruction and reconstruction now occurs in many wineries today, especially ones creating high-end?or at least high-priced?wines. They see themselves as artists and would like to convince you of same. If they can, well, you know how distorted the results can be?and who pays.
 
Matt Kramer has contributed regularly to Wine Spectator since 1985.

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It seems obvious on reflection but it remains an important distinction to make, especially given the widespread labeling of wine making as an art form, particularly in wine marketing circles.

Tags: melgab, wine, art, refinement, wine making, south-africa, South Africa

Based in Kavadarci, Macedonia, Tikve? is the largest winery not only in Macedonia but also in the whole of south-eastern Europe.

The Tikve? region is a part of Macedonia abounding in natural beauty, with a distinctive habitat and climate, important cultural and historical sites, and a very long tradition of grape growing and wine making.

The Tikve? region occupies the central part of the Republic of Macedonia; it is situated about a hundred kilometres south of Skopje, around the middle section of the River Vardar. The sub-Mediterranean climate is prevalent here, characterized by long, hot summers and mild and rainy winters. Spring is shorter and fresher here, and autumn is longer and warmer.

The ratio between produced red and white wines is 50:50. The most widely grown grape varieties are Smederevka (white) and Krato?ija (red).

The range of produced wines depends on the vintage, but the list of wines they produce as quality wines (a step above table wines) could be wrapped up as:

Reds: Krato?ija, T?ga za Jug, Teran, Alexandria, Merlot, Burgundec, Kavadarka, Cabernet Sauvignon, Vranec and Rose

Whites: Belan, Riesling, Traminec, Smederevka, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Temjanika and Alexandria.

For the ?Special Selection? wines Tikve? has chosen the highest quality grapes and turned them into their best wines. In the red wine range these are Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Merlot and Vranec, while in the white wine range these are Chardonnay, Riesling, Temjanika and Traminec. The Special Selection wines come with a distinctive label.

Technorati Tags: Macedonia Wines, Macedonia, Tikves

Although I spend a reasonable amount of time (how much is reasonable?) thinking about which wine to enjoy with a meal, quite often I'll find that even if it's not perfect it is still entirely serviceable and rather than wail hysterically while tipping the bottle down my throat, I can enjoy both food and wine while making a mental note to try something else next time.

But then, when you most want to find just the thing to do justice to the efforts of the chef, you go and make an absolute clanger. Of course it is also about doing justice to the effort that has gone into the production of the wine so showing it off in the most flattering company  is desirous  in absolute propotion to the amount of effort it is to procure a bottle and how lovingly you cherish it.

I haven't gone too far out of my way to scout out the perfect steak to show off my £5.49 Argentinian Cabernet Sauvignon. Although they would be more laidback company than some, more intricate, menus.

Had the most wonderful meal a couple of nights ago courtesy of a former Masterchef contestant.  We kicked off the evening with some Champagne Drappier Brut Carte d'Or NV. A very biscuity nose with a fresh, light and clean apple palate with a broad, creamy bottom layer with an enthusiatic but not overwhelming mousse and very decent length.

The first course was mushroom ravioli in a wild mushroom (girasol) broth in which the  woodland flavours sang out in operatic fashion. We matched that with a Louis Latour, Domaine de Valmoissine Pinot Noir 2002 from Provence. Very light crimson this was correct and tasty. Already quite evolved but still lots of fruit, just not the concentration I'd hoped for.  Made a great pairing with the mushrooms though and the lightness and acidity in the wine lifted the earthy tones and richness of the ravioli.

The fabulously elaborate meal continued with roast duck cooked in red wine with cherry sauce. For the duck I had brought along a Feytit Clinet 2000 from Pomerol having enjoyed right bank Bordeaux with duck on many previous occasions. Here though the intensity and sweetness of the cherries and the reduction glaze reduced this otherwise rather lovely wine to thin, metallic, short nastiness. Really very sad!

We tried opening an Eldridge Blue Chip Shiraz 2003 from Clare Valley in South Australia, which alone was sweet, unctuous and jammy but this too couldn't take on the cherries.

Which came first - the cherry or the Feytit Clinet? They both lost that night.  Tant pis...learn from mistakes. Next time before rummaging through the cellar, I'll ask for an exact breakdown of the recipes from my host - NO, not really! This is just for fun.

Hello All—I’ve taken a little break here, at least somewhat. We hosted our annual harvest party at Hilltop Ranch this past Saturday. The weather was wonderful, the band—“The Furry Chaps”—a fun, local bluegrass band kept us all entertained; all in all, quite good fun. We brought in the last load of grapes on October 10—a mix of Bordeaux varietals (Cabernet Franc, Petite Verdot, Malbec, Merlot) from Lockwood Oaks. I kept the Malbec separate for a possible small bottling next year, but all the others are a “field blend” in one of our bigger tanks and all of it is just now coming into the homestretch—in other words finishing primary fermentation. We have drained and pressed a few tanks of Pinot so far—as soon as I’m done with this entry, I will drain a tank—but will dedicate ourselves more to that task next week…...

Winemaker’s Dinner: Friday, November 7 at 7pm.

It might rain..............but it didn't.

Let's start with Pol Roger........

Tools for polo players

There are photographers with big lenses to capture the action

You'll need a string of polo ponies

They come in all colours
 

with strong legs.....

.....and pretty ankles

You'll need boots..............