Learn How To Easily Find Wines Of $50 Quality For $10 Or Less. Impress Friends With Your Expanded Wine Knowledge. Eliminate Your Dependence On Wine Salespeople. And Take The Hassle Out Of Buying Wine.
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The Wine Cask was sent this wine for review by the good folks at Sam's Club. It represents an embarkation to "Fair trade" products which purchases products from people who are committed to paying their workers in every step of the process a "fair wage."
This Malbec is from the Mendoza area of Argentina which is truly coming of age with respect to this grape. The 2005 vintage was a 90 point rated vintage according to the Wine Spectator. (The current issue of the Wine Spectator highlights Argentina and its forte with this grape.)
The wine is a hefty purple hue with room filling medium sweet aromas of dark berry jam and some pleasant aromas of a tinge of black licorice. This wine has plenty of life in it but is well integrated and drinking well right now. Palate is extracted with big dark fruit, some tarry notes and a touch of smokey or burnt wood--for the uninitiated, these are positives--and finishes with a lingering light plum ending. The reference price on this wine is $10 and for the price, this is a decent value so raise a glass and give it a swirl!
Medium ruby hue with nice tart pie cherry bouquet, earthy, pipe tobacco and some structure.
Palate--sour cherry with steely mid palate, black pepper and light sour cherry flavors--needs to breathe!
With 45 minutes of air, cocoa predominates over the sour cherry. It is still a bit out of balance with respect to its tartness but steely light fruit is okay drinking. You'll pay around $15 for this wine and a different year would probably prove to be more rewarding. Raise a glass!
French vintner are hoping that this years offering of Beaujolais nouveau will raise spirits during the hard financial times facing much of the world, according to the Associated Press. The vintage is traditionally released on third Thursday of November.
Beaujolais nouveau is a red wine made from Gamay grapes produced in the Beaujolais region of France. Production methods leave little tannin in the wine. It is a light, fruity wine best served slightly chilled. Critics generally hate it, but the French public (and many New Yorkers) love it...
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Ahhh, “Dear Abby“…what ever happened to that in this age of near real-time social media…anyway, here’s one thats worth a chuckle (but not worth the e-mail bandwidth its probably taking up!).
Maybe this is a way to reduce traffic on the Internet, just post funny stuff up on a blog and send friends the links not giant emails.
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Dear Abby:
I have never written to you before, but I really need your advice. I have suspected for some time now that my wife has been cheating on me. The usual signs; phone rings but if I answer, the caller hangs up. My wife has been going but with ‘the girls’ a lot recently — although when I ask their names, she always says, “just some friends from work, you don’t know them.” I always try to stay awake to look out for her coming home, but I usually fall asleep. Anyway, I have never approached the subject with my wife. I think deep down I just did not want to know the truth, but last night she went out again and I decided to check on her finally. Around midnight, I decided to hide in the garage behind my golf clubs so I could get a good view of the whole street when she arrived home from a night out with ‘the girls.’ When she got out of the car she was buttoning up her blouse, which was open, and she took her panties out of her purse and slipped them on. It was at that moment, crouching behind my golf clubs, that I noticed a hairline crack where the grip meets the graphite shaft on my 3-wood. Is this something I can or should try to fix myself, or should I take it back to the pro-shop where I bought it and try to get a refund?
A weekend blow through to (NW's) place had us drinking through a few bottles from his "informed" cellar. (NW) of this blog, picked this up several years ago and laid it down. It comes from the St. Julien section of Bordeaux and is noted as a premier great growth year after year.
Even before raising the glass to my nose sweet fruit filled the air. Luden's wild cherry cough drops (a fond memory from kid-dom came to mind)
Nose is big cigar box aromas with touches of leather and of course cherries galore.
Palate--even at 13 years old, this wine still has some maturing to do with slightly chewy tannins, which lay out the cedar foundation with bright red fruit, plum. (NW) paid around $50 this when he purchased it but you won't be able to touch it for that now. Raise a glass for sure!
I am a big fan of Rosenblum zins so when I saw this one in a store next to the ubiquitous "Vinter's Cuvee" I grabbed a clerk and asked how much? The led to a 20 minute hunt to figure out where the wine cam from as they had no record of it, and neither they, nor I had ever heard of it. It was determined that it was mispacked in with a case of the other zin mentioned so they gave it to me for the price of "Vinter's Cuvee." I grabbed two bottles at $10 each and thought I probably scored a "find."
Well, I was wrong! It is a lighter cherry red hue with raspberry and berry nose. Palate is watery with fleeting flavors that are just so, so. My wife said thee was loads of charcoal and smoke. At any rate, this is a wine to be passed up! But don't let that discourage you from trying any one of the many Rosenblum single vineyard Zins. They're delisicious!
This wine and its red counterpart are always nice values. This white blend from the Cotes Du Luberon is a light golden with sweet almost perfumy bouquet of vanilla, red apples and pears.
Palate--lively acidity, light citrus, pears and crisp clean finish. Blended from 4 different grapes, this wine is just a decent wine and drinks well by itself yet handles the right foods as well. I find this wine most everywhere in the $6 (when on sale) to $8 and again--this and its red version are writh keeping around for lighter drinking that won't break the bank. Raise a glass!
I've consumed a handful of cheaper wines this weekend, and whilst the 2005 Wyndam Bin 555 Shiraz was quite good, this puts them all to shame.
Charles Sturt University (home to Australia's leading wine school) sounds like a progressive and interesting place to study. This incredibly cheap but delightful chardonnay is compellingly direct and brisk. Pale with a flash of green, this is pert and laden with stonefruit and crisp acidity.
It's been a wetter and milder than normal November, which perhaps accounts for the large number of snails in my garden. I've ceased my campaign of chemical warfare and decided coexistence and photography is the best approach. . .
Finish of mixed berries, cassis, cedar, and tobacco
Good friends treated us to a couple of bottles of this wine. It's drinking really well right now and is enjoyable because it's so relaxed and polished. The flavors integrate beautifully, and the texture is nearly perfect.
To purchase this wine at auction or from the library collection of a fine wine merchant, expect to pay around $150 per bottle. As one of the Grand Cru Classe wines of St. Emillion, this wine has the reputation of aging quite well. Typically a Merlot-based blend, it has developed a strong reputation and a strong following for decades.
With an on premise spa, accommodations, restaurant, and soon even their own brand of cheeses, Village Farm Winery is a resort destination for wine lovers and the merely curious alike. That's not even to mention the wines, which are well worth mentioning.
At the entry level there is a delightful rose of Syrah with the even more delightful name of Ma Cherrie. The Village Cellar line offers a 100% Chenin Blanc and a Shiraz with 15% Cabernet Sauvignon. Both of these are fruit forward styles that are easy to enjoy.
The Chateau des Brumes Shiraz / Cab blends have a name that evokes France, and this is more than a coincidence. In a controversial, but highly successful move, the des Brumes wines are made in part from Cabernet grape concentrate brought in from France.
This practice is somewhat akin to chaptalization which is the adding of sugar to increase the potential alcohol of a wine. Some would say the most honest way of accomplishing this would be the addition of concentrated grape juice, which is exactly what des Brumes is doing.
It is not only the addition of the sweetening agent that some might consider to be cheating, but that the grapes come from France. No laws are being broken, and the resulting wines are of excellent quality, so it is mostly a question of honesty on the label that is at stake. Chateau des Brumes is completely honest about the origin of their wine.
I usually let the product in the glass make up my mind about a wine, and in this case Chateau des Brumes gets my vote. There are three levels of the Shiraz blend, a Gold label with 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, the Les Prestige with its mauve color label and 30% Cab and at the top La Fleur a royal blue colored label and 40% Cab with the longest aging in oak barrels.
The vineyards are maturing and the amount of French wine they are adding is decreasing, but during my visit there I saw first hand one of the reasons they like to hedge their bets.
More than 1/3 of their Cabernet fruit had been destroyed by that oldest of vine pests, powdery mildew. Oidium as it is known to the techie crowd was one of the nails in the coffin of the French wine industry in the late 19th century, but it is far from unheard of even in modern times.
Fungicide and other extreme measures can be taken to prevent the mildew, but you have to commit to spraying before it shows up, and in this day and age the unbridled use of petrochemicals is not highly regarded by careful stewards of the land. Therefore they take their licks, and keep on trying to produce the highest quality grapes they can.
The resort itself is a treat to visit. Taking the rustic air of the Village Farm name to heart the whole place is designed to evoke a visit back to simpler times, but without any sacrifice of comfort.
The rooms are sparse but comfortable and overlook a whirlpool bath and pool. The day spa has all of the usual treatments and massages that Thailand is famous for, and the old barn converted to a restaurant hosts daily wine appreciation courses.
A small glass window bust-out lets visitors peek into the winery itself. Carved out of the ground with much of the bare rock left exposed, it has a real traditional wine cave feeling that also helps to keep the temperature down. The winery is tiny, and only has two basket presses to process the grapes as they come in. It seems an impossible task. Half of what little space they have is set aside for the temperature controlled barrel aging room.
Combining hand ons techniques with modern advances and some good old fashioned ingenuity they make the best of what they have, and every glass of wine they pour proves the results.
Viravrat Cholvanich took what was an only a fruit farm just a decade ago, and has added to it a modern wine destination. The plans for the next generation are in place with daughter Viravadee having already taken over the reins as Managing Director.
Further down the road then some of the other wineries of the area, Village Farm is the perfect place to end your tour of the wine scene centered around Khao Yai National Park. Enjoy a facial and back rub, saunter over to experience a Thai Fusion dinner, pop a couple of corks, and then rest up in your room after a brisk swim and soak.
Mr. Ramsay is not actually in residence at his latest London venture, the York & Albany, but the place has all his hallmarks: professionalism, attention to detail and tweaks of idiosyncrasy.
Pertaining to the art group ?000SICK Estudio?, founded in 2000 with the artist and musician Rafael Jurado, resides and works in Seville (Spain).
Each human mind guards a back door in the deepst of its unfathomable mistery. All these doors open into the same dark and quiet back alley; previous to culture and even to ourselves, only self intuition sometimes gives us indications of its existence.
Emilio Subira´s work is focused on the intuitive translation of the multiplicity that characterizes the reality in plastical terms from the perspective of a viewer plunged into ostracism, working like a satirical and critical filter.
There's a working theory out there about Pocahaunted: either every record they've released is a concept album, or none of them are. There's good proof to support both camps. The truth, of course, might lie somewhere in between the two (if that's possible -- which it probably isn't), but Island Diamonds makes a stronger case for the former. The ladies' longstanding studio union with Eagle Rock guru Bobb Bruno has explored an array of terrains in the past, but their partnership on Diamonds transformed Pocahaunted into a way weirder, doper, and dancier creature than ever before, inspired in equal parts by Manda's obsession with Max Romeo tropical soul and bad acid jazz and Bethany's abiding love of mainstream rap and the Cocteau Twins (that sounds like it'd be a nightmare, right?). Naturally, the results don't really resemble any of the influences they may have attempted to channel during these sessions, but so what? Low-lidded drum machine beats, sparse guitar chimes, and the occasional air-raid siren cycle beneath a night sky of cooing, crying, and caterwauling in the classic PHAUNT mode/model. This CD digipak edition is a repress of the sold out LP on Arbor, with all new collage-portrait artwork by the band, plus two bonus tracks added on (one an outtake from the Diamonds sessions, one the unedited mix of their Bored Fortress 7" single) and a freaky digital music video for 'Ashes Is White' created by part-time Pocahaunted bassist/best friend Luis Naranjo. Info stolen from; Insound
You can find a complete discography on Nacho?s blog Hijos de Saturno. Have fun and leave me a comment!
Peel Sessions; Culled from 2 John Peel sessions and a Radio One Rick Show session recorded between 2002-2004. Featuring the line up that record the first 2 classic Nebula albums "To the Center" & "Charged" , these recordings demonstrate why Nebula were regarded as pioneers of the late90's/00's stoner rock scene. Los Angeles based trio **'Nebula'** , comprised of Eddie Glass (Guitar/Vocals), English geezer Tom Davies (Bass/Vocals) & Rob Oswald (Drums). ........It all started when Eddie Glass & Neil Blender were making weird 4 track music ,,Alien Workshops' first video.... Eddie then went on to drum for **'Olivelawn'** ........ later Eddie played lead guitar with **'Fu Manchu'** , writing some of the songs and playing lead guitar on the first three albums.^....... **In 1997 Eddie Glass and Ruben Romano started** Nebula**.......... Guitars, Drums, Moogs, Sitars, psychedelics electric guitars,shredding drums... ***Nebula.*** Tom Davies crossed the Atlantic in the summer of 2004 to join the Nebula ranks.>> ^ the recent addition in early 2007 consists of Rob Oswald, (Karma To Burn/Mondo Generator), Nebula are re-igniting the fires started in '97. Five albums later - one on 'Relapse', two on 'Sub Pop', a couple of EP's on 'Meteor City' and now the long gone 'Mans Ruin' and a long list of records with 'Cargo Sweet Nothing', featured regularly in soundtracks to movies, TV shows. After appearances at ;Sunset Junction' Festivals and numerous tours in Europe, Australia, Japan, South America and many North American tours with the likes of Mudhoney, J Mascis & The Fog and The Hellacopters, Nebula have recently returned from a month long festival tour in Europe and will continue to tour as long as god & man is willing.
Nose: very fruity nose of cherry cola and macerated day old strawberries Palate: light feel with strong acid structure and some tannins Finish: short and a bit metallic
Hooray for Beaujolais Nouveau day! The Primeur 2008 Beaujolais Nouveau from Drouhin this year is a solid table wine that is easy to drink and easy going. It meets expectations without letting down. Shows good character. I paid $16 for the bottle.
Beaujolais Nouveau Est Arrive! I bought the first bottle at our local store and am serving tonight with raclette of salmon and baby spinach with dill cream cheese.
The wine is purple--of course-- with a fairly big bouquet of sweet strawberry that is nearly perfumy. Palate is a little chewy with light strawberry flavors and a slightly steely finish.
This is pretty straight forward Nouveau although better than last years! I paid $9 for it a the super market. Look for other producers and also look for Beaujolais Villages Nouveau and give them a whirl. Let us know how you like them--or don't and raise a glass!
Beaujolais Nouveau Est Arrive! I bought the first bottle at our local store and am serving tonight with raclette of salmon and baby spinach with dill cream cheese.
The wine is purple--of course-- with a fairly big bouquet of sweet strawberry that is nearly perfumy. Palate is a little chewy with light strawberry flavors and a slightly steely finish.
This is pretty straight forward Nouveau although better than last years! I paid $9 for it a the super market. Look for other producers and also look for Beaujolais Villages Nouveau and give them a whirl. Let us know how you like them--or don't and raise a glass!
Seeing as there are 8 people viewing the older Threshers Voucher pages on Spittoon as I type I thought a quick post of the new money off voucher was in order.
I wasn't going to bother seeing as its been printed in various national newspapers and other websites and the focus of Spittoon has changed a little over the year... but here you go...
Tecnorati
