Destination Sommelier

Searidge 2005 Merlot

2007-07-02T16:32:00.000-07:00

Let us start out by saying that we love this wine. Gene Stein agrees in her post Brief Encounters of the Best Kind. It's a great everyday table wine at the price (we got it for $5.99 at the coop).

Sea Ridge doesn't appear to have its own website, which is unfortunate. What little I could find out is that the vintner is named Dan Wickham. The winery was started in 1979 in Sonoma and they produce about 1500 cases a year.

We bought the wine because the back label described the wine's flavor as containing plum fragrances. We haven't explicitly tasted anything with plum hints, so we decided to try it.

The flavor was dominated by plums and we couldn't pick out the black cherry fragrances that the back label lists. The plum flavors gave it a smooth mouth feel and a fantastic finish. I would only ding the wine on having a slightly sweet flavor that borders on juicy. I wouldn't drink it with anything bold or spicy, which we did (curry), and don't condone. I'd definitely buy it again though. It's a great cooking wine in the sense that I drank it while cooking.

Speaking of cooking, here's our new kitchen in the new apartment. It's so nice to be out of a roommate situation that I (Jesse) have been on a cooking binge since we arrived. I made wheat flour tortillas for lunch tomorrow. We can't find any good bread within walking distance, which is a shame. I love cooking bread, but it's hard to do consistently on a busy schedule.

Fetzer 2005 Merlot

2007-06-23T16:46:00.000-07:00

We've started a google map with all the wines we've tasting. I think this gives a good sense of location and distance. Perhaps of geography, too. Here's the address. Bookmark it!

Wine map link

Don't forget our tasting notes, too.

Sticking in the Californian Merlot mode, we picked up a bottle of Fetzer 2005 merlot to have with the pizzas tonight. Frozen, baked pizzas are kinda our thing on Saturady night. Dinner and a movie. We watched The Weatherman with Nicolas Cage.

I thought the aroma of the wine had hints of black cherry and raspberry. Tara disagreed about the raspberry. The first taste held tastes of cherry and something peppery. Tara noted that this wine didn't have 'woody' flavors that the Redwood Creek merlot had last week. I think this is probably because Fetzer doesn't use oak barrels for this merlot. They probably use stainless steel.

The feel of the wine was less full than the Redwood Creek merlot we tasted last week, which filled the mouth with flavor.

Redwood Creek 2005 Merlot

2007-06-16T15:07:00.000-07:00

Ah, the first bottle. We don't have the Nez, yet, but why should that stop us? By us, I'm referring to my girlfriend T and me, who has agreed to join me on this adventure. And why not? I certainly can't be putting down bottles on my own.

We're starting with a merlot from Redwood Creek (they have a fantastic web site, btw).

Vintner: Redwood Creek
Country: USA
State/Province: California
Varietal: Merlot
Vintage: 2005
Price: $6.99 (on sale)

We didn't have the suggested grilled meats to go with the wine, just frozen pizzas, which I think were sufficient.

This being the first wine tasting, we struggled to find the words to describe the wine. I thought I tasted cherries and T agreed. But we couldn't find any other fruit flavors in it. The aroma of the wine is quite pleasing. It hints of cherries and I think some vanilla, but I can't be sure. I like wines that have a pleasant finish and this one does. The vintner's description says it has 'round mouth feel'. I can't be sure what that is, but I do know when a wine leaves a dry, clawing taste in the mouth and this one doesn't. It's kind of soft, like banana juice rather than cranberry juice.

Both of us concurred that the wine is quite drinkable and we'd buy it again, especially at the $6.99 sale price. It complemented the pizzas just fine. No need to grill quail or anything (which we have done, with admirable success).

AdSense

2007-06-13T17:38:00.000-07:00

Now, I don't intend this blog to be a big money maker. In fact, if it makes a dime I'd be surprised. But I am going to be highlighting wines, offering critiques and making suggestions. If Google can do a good job with its ad placements, the type of products advertised in this blog will be quite complimentary to the content. Wine drinking is about consumption and consuming costs money.

Le grand Nez

2007-06-13T17:11:00.000-07:00

So, from an article I read in one of those in-flight magazines a couple weeks ago, I learned of a kit called "Le Nez du Vin" or the "The Nose of Wine". The Nez is a collection of aroma essences. By inhaling an essence and then smelling a wine that is purported to contain that taste, you can train yourself to recognize individual flavor elements in a wine. So you smell the essence of tobacco and then taste a zinfandel (my favorite grape) to train your brain to recognize that flavor.

Cognitively, this method makes a lot of sense. It's a process creating neurological connections, essentially learning to recognize smells like one learns to associate sounds to marks on a piece of paper -- the process of reading.

The Nez is not cheap. Wine Aromas sells a few Nez kits. Of course, I immediately want the Master Kit.

With 54 aromas including grapefruit, Lychee, Pepper, Saffron, Butter, Musk, and Toasted Bread, I'd probably just sit and smell them when bored.

They also have Wine Faults kit, which I hadn't anticipated, but now that I see it, it makes complete sense. Learning to recognize wine gone bad is just as important as picking up on the pleasurable notes.

At $319, the Master Kit is a bit cost prohibitive for a just-graduated-facing-student -loan-debt master's student. At $109, the 12 aroma red wine kit is just within my discretionary budget range.

The aromas include:

Strawberry
Raspberry
Blackcurrant
Blackberry
Cherry
Violet
Green Pepper
Truffle
Liquorice
Vanilla
Pepper
Smoked

Even the $109 is going to force some budget shuffling, though! And then the wine. This is going to get expensive. I should probably keep a running tally of what I'm spending on the road to become a Sommelier.

A hobby dream

2007-06-12T11:53:00.000-07:00

How deliciously useless, being an expert in wine. But if life had a purpose, it's not been revealed to me; and we all need hobbies.

I will document my road to becoming a sommelier in this blog. It's a long road and who knows if I'm cut out for it. I'd rather know what my limits are than wonder what they could have been.