if she's got a good palate and the ability to support it she'll evolve along the pinot noir line and then to it's epitome, burgundy dual magnums rare zin hundred dollar zin, near $300 at its peak - www.wine-searcher.com 1994 turley black sears the top zin producers http://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=7014 http://www.wine-searcher.com/wine-36437-1997-williams-selyem-coastlands-vineyard-pinot-noir-sonoma-coast-usa good juice among the best
Ah, now that is one of the main restrictions! I generally draw the line at ~ $20/bottle. But i see you've got some ravenswood in your list, which is also in her cellar! Last vacation in san diego, we found some on sale & stocked up. We also got a nice 3 angel syrah, i think, clearanced out for $9/bottle. Some of the more expensive wines do taste good (they ought to!), but it is hard to justify, unless you're a 1%'er (which i've suspected about you for a long time ). But on sale, in california especially, you can get pretty good wines for under $20/bottle. Most of ours are under $10. The bogle line is good, & trader joes has some decent wines, too.. she doesn't go for the 2 buck chuck's too much, though there was some italian sangiovese on sale there a cpl yrs back that we picked up that was decent, especially for the price. She likes the aussie shiraz wines, & that is a regular. I would say she imbibes a couple bottles a week, maybe 3 tops.. & usually 2. But there is a glass of wine every night. Our younger son used to play classical guitar at some local wineries here in az, & gave his mom the 'tip' he got for playing, a nice bottle of wine, She saves them for special occasions.. he's in waikiki, now, & doing fine. We are coming to the philosophy more & more that 'life is too short to drink cheap wine', but there are unfortunate fiscal limitations involved. It's not like we have a printing press, or work for the govt. Money is a big deal for us, & we have to manage it. It would be nice if we were loaded & could open a $100 bottle of wine every night, but that seems surreal. I don't know if i could do it, even if i could afford it!
Juice is basically what you get when crushing fruit or grapes. The juice goes through fermentation which is when it becomes wine or alcoholic. Technically, juice is juice (non-alcoholic) and wine is wine (alcoholic)...
You have good taste in Zinfandels. I have tried many of those over the years....Turley.....yummm. The Ravenswood vineyard designated Zins....wine tasting at Ravenswood in the early days was a real treat. Love me Zinfandel. But in the end, good wine is a matter of taste. I prefer big reds, but if someone else prefers a cheap white, then who am I to tell them they are wrong?
IMO wine tastes different to each individual and if a person truly enjoys a $7 bottle of wine then great! Two-Buck Chuck sells tens of millions of bottles per year. Trader Joe's and BEVMO in our area are great places to buy inexpensive yet quality wine. Premium wine companies are constantly needing to dump over-stock or vintages to make room for newer vintages and create cash flow. They use places like Trader Joe's to achieve this but almost always the wine is sold under a different label. If you look on the back label you will see who is bottling the wine and if you have some knowledge about these people and the industry you can guess that some of the wines are premium wines being sold for $5-$10 bottle. Even Two-Buck Chuck buys some premium grapes and juice although at rock-bottom prices so you can go to a store and buy one bottle, go to your car and taste the wine, and you might get a lucky batch of more premium wine, and if so go back into the store and buy more from the same case or lot numbers. Lastly, it's fun to experiment with wine from Mexico, South America, Italy, France, etc. all available at Cost Plus or Trader Joe's or Costco and others...
ravenswood has different owners now, ultra-corporate but even under joel peterson, in time they offered an array of wine at from $7 to $25 the hand crafted, single vineyard bottlings sold at a premium: dickerson, cooke, old hill, teldeschi and belloni are legendary vineyards [video=youtube;I4FTdjjWLnc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4FTdjjWLnc[/video] http://www.ravenswoodwinery.com/Joel#joel/joel_peterson i'm not a 1%'er, but i'm in the biz, so my collection is like a .000000001%'er plus, i started buying wine as investments, over 35 years ago
LOL I get it, you're a wine club member or something like that, and you all sit around spitting wine into the sink patting yourselves on the back and blather on like you know what you're on about! Get off the juice man!
funny, all the sudden you know what juice means and i'm too heavily vested to get off what a joke, i don't belong to any wine clubs, i used to work with sf importer/distributors but, i've had my own gig for decades read, taste everyday for decades, verticals, horizontals, trade tastings, taste blind, walk the vineyards, talk to the winemakers/oenologists/cellar rats & etc other than burgundy, a few of the regions i know well are piemonte, tuscany, jerez, montilla, malaga, mosel and loire
Yes i know what juice is, i even know what free run juice is. LOL Australian Pinot N is awesome, by the way. LOL
très belle A short portrait of Jacques Granges, a winemaker owner of the "Domaine de Beudon" in Fully, Valais, Switzerland. A magnificent place accessible only on foot or with a small cable car. Jacques and Marion have been farm their land according to the biodynamic philosophy [video=youtube;0r1n53QAJ6M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r1n53QAJ6M[/video]
As I write this I am drinking a Chateauneuf-du-Pape.A Domaine Galevan from 2006.I can afford them now. I couldn't 10 years ago.They still average around $50. Chateauneuf range around $ 35 - $ 150.One who hasn't drank a lot of French red probably couldn' tell a really nice Cotes-Du-Rhone { almost always under $ 25 }. It has to go to production.Chateauneuf are grown and produced and shipped in much smaller acerage and therefore case lots.It is changing however.Where Chateaneuf are now far more widely available than back in the late 90's. I have virtually given up on beer.Here it is the hottest week of this summer and I enjoy big reds. In fact,a huge beer nut during and after college { even though I did like Rose wine when a senior and thus adopted my first inclings}. It's funny Ironic.I now find beer tasting like weird.It's the tongue.The tongue decides what we find attractive.That is why those who drink cola's all day long,especially teens are addicted.Hourly exposure to colas and cigs are a worse addiction than being a Heroin addict.Yet many an average person out there has that addiction. They end up with health problems,bad skin and teeth and overall skittishness. It effects their mental state.
magnum score (1500 ml) http://www.wine-searcher.com/wine-77346-2008-allegrini-amarone-della-valpolicella-classico-docg-veneto-italy
FYI - The annual Beaujolais Noveau is out for the holidays!!! This wine rocks at around $12 http://www.beaujolaisnouveauday.com/
iBeen enjoying the Chilean/Argentine selection lately. I'm quite fond of the Argentine malbecs thesedays. Undistinguished yet neutrally pleasant and thus, versatile. Not to mention at an average of around $5-6 a bottle it can't be beat. This is good news if you're actually a chef...
I'm a fan of Argentine Malbecs as well so I will have to try this out. I'm a fan of this particularly:
