Wine Round-Up for the last week of February

All right, check it out...here's what I've been drinking this week.

WHITE

Santo Vineyards, Santorini Assyrtiko (Volcanic Terroir) 2014

Where: Santorini, Greece. That same island that you always see the jaw-dropping photos of, like this one: 

                         (Photo taken from http://foundtheworld.com/santorini-greece/)

Yep, it's pretty there. Beyond scenery, there's an ancient tradition of winemaking on the island, largely focusing on white wine from one grape, Assyrtiko (ah-SEAR-tee-ko). The island is volcanic, and super windy, so the vines are grown in flinty, mineraly, volcanic soil...and are trimmed low and coiled into "baskets" that grow really close to the ground to keep them from getting swept away. They look like this:

(Photo taken from http://www.fabuloussavings.com/blog/spectacular-santorini-7-off-the-jewel-of-the-aegean/santorini-vines/)

Not your normal vines. Anyways, let's get on with it!

Appearance: Light gold. Still quite clear, but it's a deeper color than, say, riesling.

Aroma: Really zippy lemon, ripe apple, and minerality (that hard-to-describe stony smell).

Taste: Bright, acidic lemon and apple come up first. At the end, you get that stony mineral note, plus a salty sea air flavor...definitely a marker of coming from a seaside environment. The acidity is enough to make your mouth water, in a good way. The taste lingers and is decently complex (all of the things dance around on your tongue). It's quite dry and crisp.

Food: Seafood. It's from an island; pair it with fish, shellfish, shrimp, squid, oyster, etc., especially if it's done up simply - grilled with lemon juice, herbs, etc. This could do alright with lemony grilled chicken, too.



Kung Fu Girl, Riesling 2014

Where: Columbia Valley, Washington. Washington is really getting a reputation for good wine. It's the second largest wine producer in the US (after the obvious one), and the cool, consistent climate has really helped some northern climate grapes (like riesling) shine. This website has some great details on the Columbia Valley...it's a huge region with a lot going on.

Appearance: Light to medium straw.

Aroma: Lime, wet stone/minerality, perhaps some ripe apple.

Taste: Bracing, rushing stream of honeyed lime. Almost like a mountain stream splashing down a rocky slope on a sunny day thanks to the minerality. High, balanced acidity; either on the full side of light body or the light side of medium body. Not overly complex, but it lingers a little bit.

Food: Like most rieslings, this could go with a lot of different foods. Given the origin of this one in Washington, the thought of pairing it with salmon makes me happy...the acidity would cut through the fattiness of the fish really well. This would also go well with a nicely spiced, fatty piece of poultry, like duck. 

Viva Bulgaria!

Just one wine to talk about today, but man...is it a doozy.

Mezzek, Mavrud 2013

Where: Thracian Valley, Bulgaria. Yeah, I didn't know they made wine, either. Apparently, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria was the world's second largest wine producer by volume. It sounds like most of that was of sub-Carlo Rossi quality red table wine for consumption in Warsaw Pact nations. Somebody had to make the people's wine, I guess...so you might as well do it in one of the sunniest nation of formerly communist Europe. At any rate, the more I look into it, the more it sounds like the region of Thrace is a real up-and-coming wine producer. I'm going to Turkey in two months and will be taking a day-long wine tour of the Turkish wine country in Thrace, but damn...now I want to go to Bulgarian Thrace, too, because...well, you'll see.

Appearance: Dark ruby. In other words, it's a deep, vibrant reddish purple, but still not "inky" - I can kinda see my fingers wiggle through the glass.

Aroma: This is where things get fun. I didn't really know what to expect; I've never had any wine made from the Mavrud grape before, or anything from Bulgaria (or the rest of Thrace, for that matter), so I didn't know what to expect. Typical or not, I don't know, but this wine has a really delicious aroma of red berries (strawberry and raspberry in particular), with some vanilla and a little hint of toasty oak.

Taste: Wowza. This is going to be dorkily poetic, but...this tastes like sunlight drifting through forest leaves and landing on a patch of berries. You could write haiku about how this tastes. Bright, fruity, but not overpoweringly so - it's still dry. The vanilla and bit of spice that suggest some oak aging come in after the fruit, and are just so perfectly balanced it'll make you slap your momma for another sip. The texture is just so smooth and soft; this is like silk in your mouth, with soft, elegant tannins. Easy drinking - almost dangerously so considering its ABV is listed at 14.5%, but you wouldn't guess. It lingers, too - not super complex, but interesting.

Food: I had this with a nice, hearty, Mediterranean-influenced lentil stew and it worked well. I might not pair this with a full-on heavy red meat assault, but then again, this has got just enough oomph to maybe cut it. This would be aces with grilled chicken, pork, or even lamb. I can also totally see this working (not too surprisingly) with some typical Greek/Turkish flavors - stewed eggplant, moussaka, gyros, souvlaki, maybe even a fattier fish stewed with tomatoes and onion. Also, this is REDONKS with dark chocolate with raspberry...I had with a Ghirardelli square, but I'd kill to have this with a not-too-sweet chocolate cake with a raspberry jam ribbon.

You want to know the best part? I seriously paid *maybe* $9 for the bottle, and that's Chicago price, city booze tax and all. This drinks like it could be priced for $30. Go track this one down, fellow winos - you won't regret it.

Get Your Drink On - Our Very First Tasting Notes!

Our first three wines, for your tasting pleasure. We've got one white and two reds on deck. Let's take them from lightest to heaviest.

WHITE

Clean Slate Riesling 2014

Where: Mosel, Germany. This corner of Germany is a major wine producer and enjoys an excellent reputation for its rieslings. The slate-heavy soil here is partially responsible for the crisp and mineral tasting wines. It's also one of the northernmost wine regions of the world, so you can expect wines from here to be fairly acidic. Don't worry, that's not a bad thing - a good amount of acidity can actually be good for a wine! It helps give it some structure, and it usually results in a wine that pairs well with a wider variety of food.

Appearance: Light-to-medium straw color. Definitely still a "straw" color as opposed to a "golden" color.

Aroma: Citrus, apple, that hard-to-describe (but nonetheless present) smell of wet stone.

Taste: Bright and lemony, with less of the apple than is on the nose when you smell it..and you get some peach instead. Crisp and acidic (as we suspected), medium-light body, doesn't linger super long on the palate, but doesn't go away as soon as you've swallowed, either.

Food Ideas: This is a utility player. Definitely will work well with fish, especially with (say) a lemon butter sauce...the lemon notes in the wine will go well with the lemon in the sauce, and the wine's acidity will help cut through the richness of the butter. This one is also a rock star with salmon. I'd also pair this with lighter chicken or pork dishes.

RED

Chateau Pesquie Ventoux Terrasses 2013

Yeah, don't let the name intimidate you...you don't have to be able to say it for it to be delicious. If you *do* need to pronounce it, aim for "sha-TOE pe-ski-EH ven-TOO terr-AHS." That may or may not be right, but it's close enough.

Where: The Rhone Valley (Cotes du Rhone), France. Wines labeled Cotes du Rhone or Rhine Valley are usually from the southern Rhone Valley...so start thinking French Riviera and you're at least in the ballpark, even if this is still to the north of the coast. If you like food from southern France, Italy, or Spain, this is a red that will have some of your favorite flavors going for it - earthy, herby, savory, zesty. Southern Rhone wines are usually blends from a few types of grapes; in this case, the bottle tells us that it's a Grenache/Syrah blend (70/30, to be precise). This is pretty normal; grenache is usually the main star of the show in Cotes du Rhone reds. 

Appearance: Dark ruby. It's not quite opaque (I can still kinda see my fingers wiggle through the glass), but it's really deep in color.

Aroma: Cherry, plum, and some earthy herbs...the fancy term for these particular combo is "garrigue" (gahr-EEG), which is the French word describing the wild herbs that grow in the area...lots of rosemary, thyme, oregano, lavender, etc.

Taste: The cherry and plum are obvious, but they've got a hint of spice to them, like they're going into a pie (but without the sugar added yet). There's a bit of acidity, but not too heavy; the wine's medium body, maybe a little on the fuller side of medium. The herbs and earth are there, too, in the background. The tannins are pretty smooth and mild (your tongue notices something kinda clinging to it, but it's not too aggressive) The taste lingers for a good while.

Food Ideas: I love just about any Cotes du Rhone with hearty, herby dishes. Try with some pork spare ribs, lamb, or even a beef roast or short ribs. This would also go well with a heavier vegetarian dish, like a tomatoey lentil stew.

RED

Dry Creek Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2012

Where: Sonoma County, California. Welcome back to this side of the Atlantic, friends...California wines come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, but the big difference between a California wine and an Old World wine often comes down to weather. California's fairly warm and sunny compared to most of Europe, so wines from California tend to be fruitier and riper. This isn't good or bad; it's just different. There's more to be explored in the geography here, but we'll save that.

Aroma: Blackberry, blackcurrant, hints of pipe smoke and spice. This is all common for cabernet.

Taste: CREAMY, luscious blackberry and currant - it's almost dessert-like without being sweet. Plenty of vanilla and spice, and almost silky smooth. Full-bodied and rich. It stays in your mouth for a while. The vanilla/spice flavors tell us that this was aged in oak...as does the label, which even tells us for how long. That said, the flavors are dead giveaways in any wine - if you get vanilla plus spices, it's spent time in an oak barrel.

Food Ideas: RED MEAT. I had this with a really good steak and it was awesome. You do need something with some "umph" to it on your plate, or else the wine's going to run over it...don't drink this with chicken.

Taste like you mean it

So, now on to one of those arcane topics that might get me labeled a total snob - how to taste wine like someone who knows what they're doing.

First off, proper or not, this is still my ideal of tasting:

However, since I usually have to get out of the bed the day after I drink wine, and since staging my own wine tasting of six different wines would mean opening up six different bottles...I usually just take them one at a time if I'm at home. That said, anyone wanna come over and do a "wine tasting" and be classy together?

Boozehound humor aside, there are a few simple things you can do to get more out of a wine. First, before you even open a bottle...check out something like this, which is a nice little chart helping give some basic words to help you describe what you smell and taste. People always make fun of wine geeks for all of the purple prose (heh, perhaps appropriate) spilled out (dear God, somebody stop the puns) over what they're tasting...but I gotta tell ya, it's a lot easier to notice the details in a wine's aroma and flavor if you've got a bigger vocabulary than "it tastes like wine." For the hardcore, there's even a super snazzy wine aroma wheel that can really help you jazz up your word choice.

At any rate, even without putting some handy terms in your brain, you can really appreciate some of the details of the wine just by following these steps (freely and openly borrowed from many, but especially Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan):

-Tilt your wine glass (ideally over a white surface like a napkin) and take a look. What color is it? And no, "it's white" or "it's red" is not quite what we're going for, smartass. Is it a pale, straw-like yellow? Is it more of a gold? For a red, can you see your fingers if you put your free hand on the far side of the glass? This might seem trivial, but it can tell us something about what we're about to drink. A very light colored white wine, for example, is probably from a colder climate...which can give us some clues about how it might taste. For serious wine experts, this first stage is huge in helping narrow down what wine they're about to drink in a blind tasting...a lighter, more translucent red is never going to be from a heavy duty, big bruiser like cabernet sauvignon. So...look at your wine!

-Next, swirl it and give it a sniff. Don't be afraid to put your nose right there in the glass. Maybe don't do this if you've got a really nasty cold...snot plus wine is not a winning combo. What do you smell? If you're good at improv, you can probably start naming smells off without too much prompting, but if that's not your bag, one of those lists like the one linked to above can be a Godsend. You'll discover that certain kinds of grapes/wines from those grapes have certain smells that are more typical of them. Gewurztraminer smells like lychee, flowers, and tropical fruit; reds from southern France are often very earthy and herbal (think food from southern France or Italy), with even some olive and leather notes. Even if you don't care about matching smells up with specific wines, you'll still have a better idea of what you're about to taste.

-Then, give it another swirl and take a sip - not a big one, but enough to get a good taste. What do you notice? First off, flavors. Do you get citrus (lemon? lime? grapefruit?), apple (what kind?), berries (which ones?), chocolate? How sweet is it? Then, think about how it felt in your mouth - was it really light, was it heavy, was it kind of in between? How well did it coat your mouth? Was it smooth and soft, was it crisp and acidic, did it feel almost like something was coating or gripping your tongue? These are all a part of the picture here - flavors, structure, body/mouthfeel, acidity. They all come out on the palate.

-Lastly, how long does the flavor of the wine linger in your mouth? Does it stick around for a while, maybe even gelling and getting a little more complex as it sits? Or, does it just kinda go away quickly? Savor it and see.

I have but one hard-and-fast rule for tasting wine...you should be enjoying it! Seriously. That quote from the Psalms isn't this blog's sub-title by accident - wine is to be enjoyed. If following a process or grasping for words and flavors and whatnot makes drinking a new wine stressful, then just drink the wine how you want and follow your arrow wherever it points. Here's a related, gratuitous Kacey Musgraves video, because I can: 

If you're looking for a nice, easy test wine to try out these tasting skills with, I'll give you a white and a red recommendation. For a white, try a gewurztraminer...I'd personally suggest something from Alsace in France (I love Trimbach, personally, but it's a little spendier), but any gewurztraminer will do...there are some really budget-friendly ones grown in the US. Wherever it comes from, there is NO mistaking it for something else. Have fun with it - what do you see, what do you smell, what do you taste? For a red, go track down a bottle of Apothic Dark - snobs might knock me for being so "common" as to be pushing a cheap blend you can find at Target, but 1. screw that attitude, 2. it's tasty, and 3. it's got some scents and flavors that are SUPER easy to name.

What are you waiting for? Get to drinking!

My "wine profile"

Everybody has their own unique taste, right?

I'm no different, and while I'm on a mission to try ALL the things when it comes to wine, I have my favorites. It's probably worth spelling out some of those things from the get-go so, ya know, you can better understand where I might be coming from with my wine opinions.

Reds

-My usual go-to
-I like fruity, as long as it's not so one-note as to be boring
-Old World over New World
-Either give me at least a medium body, or make it so silky smooth that I don't miss the extra heft
-A real weakness for earthy, savory, herby wines
-Not so tannic that I pucker
-Absolute faves: Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Cote-du-Nuits Burgundy (and other earthy pinot noirs), Argentine Malbec, Uruguayan Tannat

Whites

-Can't beat a chilled, refreshing white in the summer
-I love fish and seafood, which usually play well with white
-I don't like sweet whites...moscato is NOT my scene
-Without factoring in food, I like florid, rich whites that are still crisp
-Absolute faves: Alsatian Pinot Gris and Gewurztraminer, Austrian Gruner Veltliner, Macon from Burgundy (chardonnay), Argentine Torrontes

An introduction

Let's get the awkward stuff out of the way first.

Yes, I am a Lutheran pastor who is starting a wine blog. Southern Baptists, beware...when it comes to communion with this guy, there is power in the blood (so to speak).

There are really all kinds of reasons why people might look askew at this. First, a pastor is writing about drinking wine. The horror - your clergy might actually drink. For anyone who has not realized that your friendly, neighborhood pastor probably likes the sauce (and probably drinks because of you)...let this blog tear that wall of illusion down for you. If this somehow bothers you, as you sip on your Chardonnay, then I don't know what to tell you other than that perhaps this blog isn't for you.

Beyond the shock of your pastor enjoying pleasures more associated with the worship of Dionysius (for no good reason, though - wine is central to Christianity throughout the scriptures and in worship thanks to communion), there is also the question of why anyone would start another blog about another niche hobby or interest. Like, say, wine. "Who's your audience?," you may well ask. Well...you're reading this, aren't you? Looks like we have at least one taker.

Other questions arise. Why wine? Aren't Lutherans all about the beer, except for bishops, who mostly seem to go for bourbon? There's some truth to those stereotypes, and I've certainly enjoyed plenty of beer, bourbon, and various and sundry other "potent potables"...and you never know, I might just write about them, too. But wine's somehow...different.

Maybe I'm writing about wine because wine used to intimidate the hell out of me. (Your pastor also probably swears. Deal with it). I don't think I'm alone in that, either - the world of wine can seem overwhelming. First of all, the sheer range of options is enough in and of itself to leave many a person staring in dumb shock at the average warehouse-style liquor store's wine selection. Aisle after aisle - France, Italy, Spain, California, Australia, Germany, and beyond. That's just geography...now add in grapes. Cabernet, merlot, chardonnay...and then the ones you *don't* know how to pronounce. What the hell is a Gruner Veltliner or a Xinomavro? Even if you aren't put off by the sheer scale of wine's basic varieties...how do I know if I'll like *this* bottle? How do you even start trying to decide?

My entry into the world of wine came mostly through a year spent in Uruguay. I grew up around wine, though this was mostly limited to my mom's humongo jugs of Carlo Rossi burgundy and my grandmother's boxed Franzia white grenache. I dabbled some in college, but usually stuck to beer or things stronger (and usually cheap...it was college). Then, I went to Uruguay. Uruguay, while an up-and-coming wine producer, is next door to a much more established wine country...Argentina. I vacationed in Argentine wine country (Mendoza, specifically) and fell in love with the signature Argentine wine, malbec. I came back to the US right as malbec was beginning to turn into a household word. For several years, I mostly stuck to the tried-and-true malbec world, usually only drinking wine if it was over dinner, and usually only departing from malbec if I was serving fish or white meat...in which case I usually went for pinot grigio (since I knew it was a white wine people liked), or the big name white wine of Argentina, torrontes.

I mostly stuck to malbec and torrontes until I met my wife, who is a riesling lover. I started dabbling in Spanish wines, discovering garnacha and verdejo due Rueda...and then I got a little obsessed with pairing food and wine. I'm going to blame the somewhat obnoxious sommelier-turned-chef (or was it the other way around?) on season 1 of Top Chef for this. The notion that matching up food and wine could be more than a set of basic, "red with this, white with that" rules nudged me to branch out.

It's only grown from there. The more wine I tried, the more in love I fell with what wine can be. It can be jammy, it can be citrusy, it can be apply or herby. It can be flinty and full of minerality, it can have notes of chocolate, or leather, or pipe smoke, and everything else. A glass of wine can tell you as much about the geology, geography, history, and food of the place it comes from as a thousand books on those subjects. Wine is a world, and a window into the world.

So, I've been boning up. Reading tons of books and articles. My Twitter feed positively drips with shiraz this and gewurztraminer that. Now, I want to write about it. I want YOU to try new things with me, geek out about how well Pinot Noir goes with roast pork, and let your tongue get tied in knots trying to say Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Fear not, little flock - that big, scary wine section need not be so big or scary!

In these entries, you'll find...

-Tasting notes as I try wine, along with a picture of each label (so you can track them down more easily)
-Ideas on food pairing, and maybe even some recipes
-The lowdown on where each wine is from and why that matters
-Whatever other random things I think sound like good ideas

So...drink up!