Wine

Hugel & Fils, 2005 should run you about $16-20

Trimbach 2005 about the same. My wine stroe loves the Trimbach.

World Market's online selections are not very convincing: Boony Doon Pacific Rim is okay, Hogue is not to my taste, Polka Dot is probably cheapish and maybe too sweet for me (I have a rule of thumb to not by rielsing that is in blue bottles!), and I don't know Moselland Ars Vitis.

Spec's site has a couple of nice rieslings in the $20-30 range, Selbach Oster, Christoffel, Dr. Pauly, Kerpen:
http://tinyurl.com/mkjjo7
(sorted low to high)

I prefer Alsatians like Trimbach and Hugel, myself.

i like the pacific rim dry riesling for a nice cheap one. have for years, ever since someone brought me a bottle based on liking the label!

i must try this .. Trimbach

i just bought this 2006 Kendall Jackson Grand Reserve Chardonnay instead of the Trimbach because HEB didnt have that grand of a riesling selection, plus someone told me most ppl like Chardonnay

is it good or wat?

Had my first beaujolais noveau ever this last weekend and I liked it. Was sent home with a bottle and am quaffing like a barrel full of quaffing monkeys.

The Price of Wine

http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/46618070248/the-price-of-wine

In 2012, top French wines (including the premier cru Château Mouton Rothschild) barely defeated wines from New Jersey in a professional tasting. The Jersey wines cost 5% as much as the French wines.

Surprisingly light colored semi-transparent blood color for its 14% alcohol and it's youth. Nose is attractive raspberry fresh fruit, a hint of lamb's blood and a backbone of fresh-sawn plank wood. Surprisingly little heat given the high alcohol. Palate is soft plummy Merlot-driven fruit with firm but well-balanced young tannins and a finish of dry fresh-sawn plank wood.

what kind of plank wood?

Is there a reasonable way of sending someone one bottle of not-expensive wine, in the UK?

Anyone ever shopped from NakedWines.com?

Any good or vinegar?

Anyone tried these?

https://www.buonvino.co.uk/winifred-rose-gut-oggau

https://www.buonvino.co.uk/joschuari-gut-oggau-2011

yes! i went to a gut oggau lunch at a restaurant a month or so ago. they were all fucking great. bought a bottle of the winifred, but havent had it yet.

I have bought a boxed pinotage that was pretty decent. Really, in the UK at least (and with new world wines at least) they're a totally viable alternative. The first time I bought a box was specifically to use it for mulled wine (i.e. it was cheap) but it was so decent I drank 3/4 of it unbastardised.
― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, October 29, 2004 5:20 AM (eleven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

boxed wine in american has not made the same leap forward, unfortunately.
― lauren (laurenp), Friday, October 29, 2004 5:28 AM (eleven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

boxed wine has really become mainstream and more upscale in the last decade

x-post

I have to confess that I clocked the Gut Oggau wines in here:

http://cityslang.frocksteady.com/shop/music/flotus-box.html (A deluxe edition of the new Lambchop album)

and, having Googled the wines, was intrigued.

The only problem with boxes of wine is that is harder to kid yourself that they are units when the doc asks how many you drink a week.

I once bumped into my GP at the bottle bank. * awkward *

that lambchop thing is fun

boxed wine has really become mainstream and more upscale in the last decade

― Pull your head on out your hippy haze (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

I'm starting to see a lot of canned wine here (SoCal), 375-500 ml sizes, and not cheap. Haven't tried any yet since I don't need that packing convenience for wine.

Anyone bought wine from here before? https://www.buonvino.co.uk/shopby?manufacturer=119

Any recommendations from the cheaper end of the scale? (Pondering buying a red and a white from Gut Oggau, rounding up a case with cheaper wines).

i've had this one before, and really liked it - https://www.buonvino.co.uk/raisins-gaulois-gamay-lapierre-2014

Have ordered a bottle of Atanasius. Will report back.

Every natural wine I've tasted thus far has been garbage.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/15/has-wine-gone-bad-organic-biodynamic-natural-wine

With anything that gets super trendy, there is a lot of bad stuff that ends up being produced and distributed. I like natural wine a lot but like with everything else it's on a spectrum (plus natural wine has more bottle variability). There is extreme natural wine making and there is natural wine making that still adheres to traditional palates. You just have to be prepared for what you are going to taste. I get excited when I get a super funky, weird bottle.

my favourite recent (in the last year) discovery is crémant. that stuff is delicious

Yeah, cremant de whatever is my go to usually for sparkling. French wine made in the champenoise method but without the champagne price. And it's usually a little more interesting.

I've had lots of good natural wine

it's also cheap

this isn't your father's oenophilia

http://www.executivestyle.com.au/content/dam/images/g/j/3/e/8/g/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gj2lpn.png/1440376164101.jpg

Ive had this conversation a couple of times but wine has a lot of parallels with record collecting/audiophiles. Some people like lo-fi or field recordings and some people don't like that style. You may have to put in the work to search out the best of the bunch. Or just be surprised by the bottle.

I'm OK with a lot of wine surprises, but draw the line at wine that veers strongly to kombucha.

yeah, cremant de loire/bourgogne/jura... all that stuff is sooo tasty

natural wine can get back to me when it makes up its mind about what it is.

i'm totally willing to try a bottle here and there but there's a crazy amount of variance under the natural wine umbrella. and it's falsely being presented as a black/white thing with conventional wine by a lot of enthusiasts which doesn't ring true. the farming practices and limited intervention make a ton of sense to me, but i'm definitely not convinced that spontaneous fermentation is always the right answer.

i had a natural rosé at a tasting last weekend and it started off innocuously before diving into a weird slate and graphite rockiness. it was interesting, which is the most i can say for several nws i've had.

I personally like super minerally/rocky/ashy wines or still wines with a surprise bit of petillance. But best is to just ask whoever is selling it for a descriptor.

The natural wine vs crafted wine battle has gotten kind of funny recently though. People are getting angry!

Are USA wineries putting out natural wines? I doubt many of the good French ones make it out of the country.

Yeah, natural wine is very big. I like Clos Sauron, La Clarine Farms, Division. Some do tend to taste reduced and off balanced though.

Oh and Bow and Arrow. I was just looking at one of the natural wine bar menus in NY (the one James Murphy owns) to see what he's carrying. It is mostly french though on most natural wine bar menus.

Donkey & Goat is good

they made the weird rosé i tried

i think all the natural wine I've drank so far has been french

if you like super minerally wine (and are in the UK), I recommend M&S costa fresca sauvignon blanc

Wtf is natural wine

Just imagine if the viniculture and vinification is done in the "purist" way possible to produce wine.

From the Guardian article posted upthread.

This was a so-called natural wine – made without any pesticides, chemicals or preservatives – the product of a movement that has triggered the biggest conflict in the world of wine for a generation.

Also can include using wild yeasts for fermentation.

Donkey & Goat is good

― Tapes 'n Tapes of Osho (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, May 18, 2018 3:03 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they made the weird rosé i tried

― call all destroyer, Friday, May 18, 2018 3:08 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

have not had that. I guess I should say the pet nat is good.

Thanks nick

Taking my WSET Level 2 exam today. I don't come from a wine background before the last few months, so it's felt quite a jump and I'm more than a little nervous. My head is completely overflowing with grape varieties and regional facts... fingers crossed they all come together this afternoon and I remember my Burgundy from my Bordeaux from my Beaujolais, my Clare Valley from my Central Valley, my Gamay from my Garganega etc etc.

Sparkling, sweet wine, sherry, port and spirits to study this morning first though.

Wow, good luck!

Yeah, a lot of people still associate sherry with Harveys Bristol cream from the 1970s.

Sommelier cheating scandal!

http://www.laist.com/2018/10/10/sommelier_cheating_scandal_23_master_sommeliers_stripped_of_titles.php

Some of them already took the tasting retest and passed.

My boss was one of those stripped of his MS status after the scandal--my heart hurt so badly for him! We had congrats banners hanging in the restaurant...general jubilation and then the title got yanked away. CMS fast tracked a new tasting trial a few months later which he didn't pass. He's going again this fall.

oh damn. I know some people opened and drank once in a lifetime bottles, printed up new business cards, accepted $$$ gifts and higher speaking fees related to the new title. SUX.

Gruner Veltliner is the best white wine grape.

Cancel me if you want, this is my opinion.

It's okay I like Napa cabs more than Bordeaux so you can judge my suburban mom or shallow businessman tastes to make yourself feel better.

If someone wants to buy me some 1er cru to try and sway me, please do!

In recent blind tastings organized by the Austrian Wine Marketing Board, Grüner Veltliners have beaten world-class Chardonnays from the likes of Mondavi and Maison Louis Latour.[1]

Gruner Veltliner is a good, cold picnic wine and I like that most bottles are actually liters and not 750ml

I know there are high-end Gruners but I've mostly quaffed the sub-$20 bottles, which are nice and crisp