Wine

xpost - rioja is a good example of one that you don't have to spend a lot on to get a good bottle.

Also, you can buy wine boxes for a bit cheaper. They're pretty cool.

We've had a banrock station box, and it was perfectly fine.

Not sure of the year but Wolf Blass/Berringer were both bought out by Fosters. Berringer used to be used by Nestle prior to that one.

Can anyone recommend anything on the plcb list for twenty bucks or under that I might like to drink?

saintsbury pinot noir carneros 375 ml

someone please recommend me a good Riesling thats 20-30 bux

dry, semi-dry, or sweet?

semi-dry

Where are you? Are there wine stores or do you have to go to a state-run store (lol, Pennsylvania)?
Dry to sweet - for German, QBA-> Kabinett-> Spatlese; some years will be sweeter than others.

Try a Hugel & Fils or Trimbach.

I am in Texas, i was thinking about hitting up the nearest Spec's if the World Market was too pricey

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!

good luck ! where did you do the course, out of interest ?

Thanks! Just home and sadly I found the exam quite difficult. Currently trying to assuage my disappointment and not to dwell on the things I know I got wrong (having checked the book afterwards). We shall see in 2 weeks how it all pans out when the results come.

I did it at my new(ish) workplace (been there a year now), a spirits, wine and beer specialist shop here in Glasgow. One of our managers teaches WSET Levels 1, 2 and 3 (and maybe beyond if we get interest). I work in the web side of things and don't have booze experience previously (whisky is all I really know, and how to pack boxes and take photographs), but I really love the job and have discovered quite an interest in wine especially, so I'm super keen to get some decent knowledge.

Ah, well the good thing is that the questions you know that you missed you will never, ever forget again. But good luck!

I did my WSET advanced (Level 3, I did it online except for the test) a couple of years ago right after I passed Certified Sommelier with the guild (I did the Certified Wine Specialist test too with Society of Wine Educators to keep up with reading). I have been putting off doing the diploma because not everyone offers it, I need to do it online and I can't coordinate being somewhere for the orientation and tests. I am sure you have other resources locally, but feel free to email me or discuss study methods or books to read here.

Thanks Yerac, that's good of you and an impressive résumé. In terms of reading materials... so far my meagre library consists of the Wine Folly book, a battered old edition of Jancis Robinson's Oxford Companion To Wine and the WSET Level 2 course book, so I'm definitely open to suggestions.

I didn't feel like Level 2 was difficult per se, rather that it was a lot of factual info to absorb in a short time (2.5 contact days over 3 weeks as the fully taught course we did, with the exam being the afternoon of the final week). I wish I'd started studying more beforehand, but of course everyday life intervened. Anyway, it's all good, I learned a lot whatever happens. I'll try to keep actively learning and drinking and have a very long-term eye on Level 3 in a year or more, perhaps.

I feel I want to be supportive of others research/practice in this field.

good luck with your oenophile studies everyone, something i keep meaning to get into but never quite bother to allot the time.

I've had lots of good natural wine

― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Friday, May 18, 2018 9:41 AM (three months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've drank lots of natural wine since this post and have had a much more mixed-bag experience including crazy variance between bottles, and the dreaded kombuchay-style

xpost Wine knowledge is cumulative, so even in downtime and I am not actively studying I try to read books (not reference books) or watch wine centric movies or listen to podcasts. I would highly recommend checking out Wine and War (so much about WWII I didn't know!), Champagne, Adventures on the Wine Route, The Widow Clicquot, Reading Between the Vines. These are books that have more of a story and give more frames of reference instead of just memorizing facts.

Besides any study guides that WSET gives you, I think I have only used the World Atlas of Wine and then all the study guides on the Guild Somm website (but more for when I was taking the certified somm test because they are more focused on producers, service and they have different tasting criteria). I am kind of only pursuing WSET over Court of Master Sommeliers now because I don't really plan on working as a full time sommelier (except randomly) and they are getting stricter and stricter about who they are allowing to do the Advanced test. I am pretty terrible at geography, so I actually have all of the delong wine maps framed on my walls. I used to study them while brushing my teeth or talking on the phone. Where I am/was there was always a lot of people who were into wine

I only really got into wine about 4? years ago, so it definitely is a big learning curve especially if you didn't have exposure to french or german or haven't traveled to some of these places before. Traveling has definitely also helped me sort out geography.

I've drank lots of natural wine since this post and have had a much more mixed-bag experience including crazy variance between bottles, and the dreaded kombuchay-style

― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Monday, 20 August 2018 21:21 (yesterday) Permalink

i wonder if that's because it's been summer? the lack of preservatives mean they're more sensitive to temperature change

I got my WSET Level 2 result yesterday and it turns out my worrying and over-active self-criticism was rather unfounded... I passed with distinction and got 94%! Really delighted.

Well done!

Congrats!

Congrats!

All round to krakow's ...

congrats!

Thanks everyone!

djh... I could do with help dealing with my growing stash of bottles that won't last without proper storage (nothing special though, I'm afraid), as my partner is not a big drinker, so friendly ilxors welcome here.

brain, you motivated me to revisit what I was doing with wine. I finally enrolled in the wset diploma. A place in philly allows home study (which I had no clue about before) so I only have to show up for exams of which they sometimes allow you to take more than one section in a day. I hopefully will be half done with the diploma by next summer (and before they change the curriculum).

Recently drunk:

Lots of Envinate reds. I love these so much, have stocked up on Taganan tinto, Benje and Migan.

Benevolent Neglect Syrah. Super impressive, powerful, maybe not the longest finish considering the nose. Picked up a few bottles at £28, seemed really underpriced, now I see them selling for ~£50 which seems about right.

Le Coste Litrozzo rose and red from the fridge, wringing the last enjoyment out of the summer weather here.

Have really enjoyed Terre di Faiano Primitivo (from Waitrose, currently £7.50 but usually a tenner), recently.

Xp summer's just starting here so yesterday we had a bottle each of the litrozzo white and rose in the backyard

I am going to be on the lookout for the Envinate wines. I don't think I have come across any (also the closest wine shops to me suck). I also need to drink more primitivo/zinfandel but I always tend to skip right over it in stores.

They are v hard to find here (London). I got most of them sent from a Spanish shop - gourmethunters. Don’t know where you are but they deliver pretty extensively and the prices are great. Picked up a load of stuff from Sextant, Calek, Jordi Llorens etc too.

We have a spanish only wine store here that will likely carry it. I'll check it out.

Yep, they have it. https://despanafinewines.com/search/?q=envinate

Great stuff. The Albahra is nice but maybe not as interesting as the others. I find the Migan really beautiful.

congratulations to krakow!!

i had a bottle of pet nat last weekend and my wife liked it so much she called up borough wines and ordered the last six bottles they have in storage. it does feel like wine is ripe for a craft-beer style revolution on the same scale as the what american breweries have done w ipas, unfiltered beers etc. people are open to weird flavours! some people even drink saisons ffs!

Hasn't wine gone through that revolution? I thought we already had the natural wine backlash.

haha yeah that's true... i guess it depends on who you're talking to.

tracer which pet nat was it?

Hasn't wine gone through that revolution? I thought we already had the natural wine backlash.

― Yerac, Sunday, September 16, 2018 7:54 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

natural wine is like a blip on a blip on the radar compared to what beer has done.

^^^It depends on who you talk to and what you are talking about ($, distribution, homebrewing/fermenting, domestic vs foreign). I like beer; I hate IPAs because like anything that gets popular you have a lot of really shit production.

I mean among US men, that are not in LCD Soundsystem, I agree that the craftbeer movement had more of an impact.

So, this is kind of funny. I was mulling over what type of thesis topic I would come up with if I ever got to work on my Masters of Wine and automatically I was like, WHITE MEN IN THE US AND WINE.

i'm not making a value judgement--craft beer has wrought a lot of terrible product--but natural wine hasn't even made inroads to places where decent craft beer is just assumed. unless the volume of production increases significantly and decent education comes along, i'm not sure it will get there.

Craft beer in all its myriad styles really does taste different than mass market lagers though. Does natural wine really taste any different than mass market wines? That the typical wine drinker would notice?

yes

(for better or for worse)

xpost, I assume you are just talking about the US? Because in a lot of the world outside of the US and certain euro countries, craftbeer is a blip. Even decent beer is a blip.

And yes about natural wine tasting very different. The typical drinker of any beverage won't really notice if their vodka is made from potatos or grain, or if they are drinking a pilsner or lager. they just don't They certainly won't know if they are drinking a $10 bottled of chard from somewhere in all of CA or a bottle natural white from the Loire.

idk, i've had new england ipas in austria, i've had citra-hopped ipas in india, i've had friends send me neipa pics from all manner of european countries. the impact isn't global but it has certainly had an impressive spread.

idg comparing vodka source ingredients to wine at all but suffice to say i have tasted natural wines made from grapes that intermediate wine fans would know which don't conform to style at all--i have no idea if the *typical* drinker can pick these out but i sure as hell could and i'm far from an experienced taster.

I bought a $100 bottle of wine for the first time ever -- a wine-loving couple we barely know (relative of relatives) agreed to host my whole family for several days and we needed a nice gift and hadn't had time to shop around much so I just grabbed something that was highly rated and expensive, a Kamen Cabernet (sonoma). They were nice enough to drink it with us, and it was quite good, but I can't say I found anything about it to be particularly worth $100 and it's still hard for me to believe I'll ever drink a wine that lives up to that pricetag.

Meanwhile, they turned us on to a relatively cheap chardonnay that they keep stocked as their "house" wine, Chateau St Jean (also sonoma).

I mean I've seen Blyn Brewery (not exactly craft I know) for ages now in super mainstream places in Europe which I get a giggle out of. And in Chile I know you can get Evil Twin and some randoms at a couple of places. But thinking about the main beers people drink in Asia, EU and LATAM is not craftbeer. In general, normal alcohol drinkers would not be able to describe differences about these things unless they actually pay attention and make it a point to know. This is not a natural born ability. And yes, wine is probably more offputting to know about because there are thousands of wine grape varieties and multitudes of regions to know about if you want to know what you will be drinking.

The vodka thing I brought up in my example of three just because I have to study and do tastings of a lot of spirits as well as beer and sake.

xpost California wine is typically 30-40% more than it really should be. I never really buy it unless it's some weird thing I am searching for. Do you remember the year?

I was talking about North America, where the craft beer phenomenon is present. But even an Asian who only drinks lagers would be able to tell a very hoppy IPA was different than what he/she usually drinks. Like man alive I don't always taste differences in $8 vs $20 wines. That said I've never knowingly had a natural wine, and depending on the yeast I guess it could be very different (I always associate "natural" wine with no sulfites, which may not affect the flavor as much).

I've had good luck with Chateau St Jean wines too.

The difference between a hoppy IPA and a lager is obvious though, in the same way that cava and rioja are easily distinguishable. Yerac’s example of a standard lager vs a pilsner seems perfectly correct, the inexperienced/disinterested drinker is unlikely to be able to identify and describe the differences.

The example of $8 vs $20 wine is more akin to a $4 vs $5 beer. You want/expect the more expensive one to be ‘better’, but to a certain extent this is subjective, and there are a huge number of variables which can change the drinking experience. The price is also not really based on quality, so it’s an imperfect measure. This is problematic when talking about spending $100 on a bottle of wine - a huge amount of money - because expectations are naturally sky high.

The requirement to have the time/inclination to really educate yourself, the money to experiment your way to discovering your tastes/preferences, the physical space to keep wine until it is ‘ready’ etc. are all reasons why wine is inevitably less accessible than beer.

It’s a similar story with natural wine imo. Because it’s such a slippery definition you can’t really expect a natural wine to taste a certain way - Chapoutier is (I think) a natural winemaker, but their wines are a world away from the stuff you might get from a little one-man band winemaker on a volcano in Slovakia.

I think the growing prominence of natural wine, along with the fact that it’s an opportunity to be obsessively nerdy/collect things/travel, while being a more affordable interest than being really into burgundy or whatever, means that it will inevitably creep a little more into the mainstream (in the UK a budget supermarket has just become the first to stock an own-brand skin contact wine, for example).

which supermarket and wine is that ?

Aldi

Heh, I was kind of drunk last night. Sorry. I still do think, though that the huge popularity of craft beer is still pretty America (and ok Canada) male centric. And natural wine, I don't really think of no sulfites, I think more about no filtering or fining (this may be the first thing you notice about the bottle before you even drink. It's basically just letting the grapes express themselves with very little interaction from the winemaker but there are different levels from mild to extreme styles.

The price of wine is a lot of things: how it's produced (new barrels are expensive), buying grapes vs. growing it on your own land, storage on site during aging (loss of income), all the regular overhead of running a business, demand. This is why a few wine regions are starting a beaujolais nouveau style festival/release of bottles. It's the most recent harvest, fresh, simple, no wood, no storage, get income within 2-3 months of harvest

I don't think Chapoutier is on the natural wine kick. He makes a crapload of wine though.

Chris B4tes, who is a master somm was trying to diffuse a fight about natural wine vs. crafted wine (kind of confusing in light of the term craft beer). And he used bbq to kind of explain the differences between the extremes of each style. This is kind of long, the relevant part that I am pasting.

In an ideal world:
Natural Winemaking version of BBQ- Start a fire, season a locally raised (ideally by the person cooking it), responsibly farmed, healthy, humanly butchered brisket with salt and pepper, hang brisket over a few feet from the the coals, turn occasionally until ready to eat. Serve to friends and neighbors.

Crafted Winemaking version of BBQ-Dry rub and rest an A5 Kobe beef brisket with 2% salt and 1% pepper over night. Begin fire 12 hours before you plan to serve. Once coals are ready, adjust airflow to stabilize temp at 225F and load brisket fat cap up. Hold at 225 for 7 hours, making sure internal temp hits 136 within hours of loading. Use K-type thermocouple to ensure internal temp never exceeds 148 and air temp stays between 210-235 at 60% humidity (set out of range alarm if leaving the cooking area). Wrap in foil and damper down coals, and leave brisket to rest in foil, cap up, for 1 hour before serving. Serve to friends and neighbors.

In an idealogical sence, that more or less sums it up.

In practice though, it can become extreme in either direction very easily, and it is easy to become cynical about the camp on the other side of the spectrum. In the real world, it all too often becomes:

Extreme Natural Winemaking version of bbq- Dig pit. Light fire in pit. Take brisket from animal raised by cook, without any medication, slaughtered because it started to wheeze a little, by the cook in their garage with unsanitized tools. Throw leaves from the yard onto the fire, throw unseasoned brisket on top, and throw on more leaves. Cover with dirt and close pit. Leave 48 hours. Invite all the people you know who have tattoos and mustaches. Unearth the brisket pit, remove brisket to the unsanitzed board you trimmed it on 2 days prior, and slice it and serve it, wether it is cooked through or not, tender or tough, safe or spoiled. Ignoring any comments or questions of its quality or soundness by explaining how naturally it is made.

Extreme Crafted Winemaking version of brisket-Take beef trimmings and mechanically separated chicken from whichever countries are producing the cheapest usda allowed version. Mix with corn syrup, potassium lactate, sodium phosphates, Sodium Erythorbate, Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Nitrate, and flavors, as well as liquid smoke, granulated onion, etc, and form it into brisket like shape using Transglutimate (Meat glue) to add a fat like layer to the top. Cook in giant steam injection ovens before cooling, slicing and shipping to Arby's for their new Texas Smoke House Sandwich.

Both practices/camps can make fantastic wines, each with strengths for certain needs in wine world. Both can, and are, easily taken to negative extremes.

That’s a neat analogy.

And yeah a quick google sees M. Chapoutier call all natural wine ‘defective’ so I dunno what I was thinking of there. I’m sure there are relatively large operations out there who will prove my point tho! (Zind-Humbrecht?)

On a recommendation from a very nice member of bar staff in a good bar in San Sebastian, I found myself drinking this: https://www.decantalo.com/en/ube-miraflores.html

I thought it was absolutely outstanding, I don't know that I fully understand the process(es) by which it's made but I think it's kind of manzanilla without the fortification process, which winds up with a v dry white with lots of sherry notes but also amazingly fresh and zingy.

(This comment not in respect of natural wine, just a bottle of wine I was excited about. the natural wine stuff is v interesting but I don't have much to add.)

Great recommendation! I know v little about sherry, and have only really drunk the sweet stuff (which I enjoy a lot) - I’ll keep my eyes peeled...

If you find any in the UK (and particularly SE15/ SE22 :)) let me know.

sherry is so good and such a great way to get legitimately high quality wines at very reasonable prices (due to its relative unfashionability (in the mainstream))

here is the pet nat we had: https://dzwonsemrish7.cloudfront.net/items/2b0Q3i2T0w1a2a3Q3Q0M/IMG_8581.jpg

warning my wife likes ipas and kombucha

^^^That label is so charming.

I am going to be on the lookout for the Ube or a similir wine from that region. Dry sherries used to freak me a out a lot because I thought they tasted like bone broth. That salty umami.

I always think of sherry as something I should avoid because of its association with with a local bus station legend who was known as QC Mary. Might try some out this week, under the dodgy pretext that it is needed for a risotto!

I was into tawny port for a while a few years ago, but have drifted away. Good with many cheeses. Hardys (Australia) was one I liked that was affordable, US$12-14.

Tawny is my preferred port, particularly 40 yr OF COURSE

xpost There are some nice sherry cocktails.

The uk supermarket premium sherry brands aren’t bad at all. Sainsbury Taste the Difference and Morrisons’ equivalent are both made by Lustau which is a reliably good maker. In both cases the dry oloroso is decent and I like the fino too. Tesco’s was Barbadillo iirc but they’ve stopped stocking that at the local big Tesco.

I haven't had a cream sherry in decades, sometimes I wonder whether it's nice.

The folklore regarding cider armadillos is long-forgotten around here but that is what comes to my mind whenever anyone mentions sherry cocktails (I've tried a few proper sherry cocktails at reputable places but I can rarely detect the sherry involved).

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

who here drinks sherry?
If you don't, it's okay.. I got you covered

I prefer fino (with a few olives on the side) and will go with amontillado but not really a fan of oloroso

But I'm worried about this tariff bullshit

I drink oloroso, after dinner usually, but you can make a good martini with fino in place of vermouth

I drink tawny port, which I guess is sherry-adjacent.

manzanilla!

I like manzanilla, don't see it in shops all that much

If we’re talking sherry brands, my go-to is Lustau, but right now I have a bottle of González Byass “Alfonso” in my fridge.

It's a sometimes thing for me, but I have (or had?) a bottle of Lustau Pedro Ximenez that made a fine dessert sipper.

Manzanilla is easily found in my neighborhood, in fact I also have a bottle of that it my fridge right now, La Guita brand. I think I actually bought that to make martinis with.

I am dumb about wine, and need some recommendations. Our dry reds and whites run $7.50-$8.50/glass or $20/bottle, and are stuff like Josh Cellars cab sauv, Clos du Bois merlot, Apothic Red Blend, Kendall Jackson chardonnay and sauv blanc. My boss wants me to find some bottles that we would sell for roughly $50/bottle. Any general recommendations? They need to be pretty common labels, something I would be able to find for sale in Mississippi.

YeraC would be able to tell you a few things

Do you have clientele who might want something adventurous? Or do you want to stick with classic grapes/techniques?

The latter, I'd say.

I don't think it would be priced at $50 but a step up from the ones you mentioned might be the one with the bird on it? I'll find it....

in the past i recall you sharing a list of what was available in MS? was that just spirits or is there one for wine that someone could skim?

I meant Bonterra, as it turns out.

Seghesio Zinfandel (Old Vine or any others you can find) and sparkling wine Roederer Estate and Gruet.

Looks like this MS distributor has Arrowood, Copain, Hartford Court, and Matanzas Creek wines, which would all be good and potentially the right price. Also from that distributor: Two Hands Gnarly Dudes and a bunch from Charles Smith.

Looking at the list Eazy has provided you might find some options by looking at less popular Italian grapes like Barbera or Dolcetto. That's not going to be popular stuff that will be as easy to sell, but should be better wines and more food friendly than trying to find a California cab or a red Burgandy in your price range. Like the following should all be in your price range (unless inflation has pushed them out the last couple of years):

FEUDI DI SAN GREGORIO PRIMITIVO 12/750 - Wine - Italy - W-RED - AL
FEUDI FALANGHINA 12/750 - Wine - Italy - W-WHITE - AL
FEUDI FIANO DI AVELLINO 12/750 - Wine - Italy - W-WHITE - AL
FEUDI GRECO DI TUFO 12/750 - Wine - Italy - W-WHITE - AL

Those whites in particular are lovely.

in the past i recall you sharing a list of what was available in MS? was that just spirits or is there one for wine that someone could skim?

regular list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UEGAYdKuwTQDCmbVV2b-gQvWQTmyRm2c4quQAt3ns54
special orders: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RMZfUUnN4tpTLWVVgTNgQJ3ry2gP5vthi9kaN3tzAIA

Bumping for cad in case he missed my Monday post.

Also, thanks IO, Eazy & PBKR for input! I've got a few bottles in mind now.

late to the sherry conversation, but I like manzanilla and amontillado. i got into sherry to mix it in cocktails, but those styles work well to sip on their own.

that said, I don't buy any wine as much as I used to because my wife no longer drinks, and so a whole bottle ends up going to waste.

xp i had to request access to those sheets, just did so

access updated, meant to make it visible with link

ok this is good....i'm sorting by case price, not sure how your markup gets to $50/bottle but a few i would take a look at (with their cost/bottle to the bar)

rombauer zinfandel $25
daou cabernet $17 (nice step up from the joshes of the world)
frank family cabernet $43
ruffino reserve ducale $19
catena alta malbec $19
DOMAINE ALAIN GRAILLOT CROZES HERMITAGE ROUGE 18 - $34
CH BELLES GRAVES LALANDE DE PROMEROL 15 $31
GRGICH HILLS ZINFANDEL RED $31
VACQUEYRAS ROUGE LES AUBES $27

Thank you so much for taking the time for this!!!! I will pass this info on to the boss and impress him with my (secondhand) knowledge.
Reading up on some of those, I really want to try the Ruffino -- it looks like especially good value.

From the second list, in the gamay grape section, Domaine Chapel and Lapierre (assume this is Marcel Lapierre or else idk his cousin, lol) would both be very good I would imagine. Lapierre is a sort of legendary producer, Chapel is bit newer I think but have never had one of their wines I didn't enjoy.

I recently learned about WINE FORGERIES, i.e. ppl passing off wine as being from famous brands and vintages it doesn't actually belong to. As with art forgeries, it's often in no one's interest to acknowledge the fakery.