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Whew! The Punch Down Episode 9 is in the books.

Geekiest. Episode. EVER!

The Punch Down Episode 9 with Clark Smith

Where to begin with this one? Our guest Clark Smith was in rare form, opening up a few hundred potential cans of winemaking worms. Among the topics: taking the natural wine movement to task, and showing us what happens to the texture of a wine when you play The Doors or Iron Maiden tunes in the background (a somewhat oddly terrifying experiment that you can try for yourself at home). If you think it’s easy to manipulate wine, wait until you see how easily YOU can be manipulated as a taster! I also taste through Clark’s 2003 Napa Chardonnay – both in its original (14.9% abv) and de-alcoholoized (12.9%) states… guess which one is better?

Oh, and Clark starts off with a song about Monticello Viognier. Which we can all agree is bad-ass, I think.

Prepared to have your minds partially blown, people, this episode turns a lot of our collective romanticized notions about winemaking on its barrel heads.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Common winemaking adjustments (see my Wine.Answers.com interviews with Clark on that topic, parts One and Two)
• www.postmodernwinemaking.com (Clark’s site)
• WineSmith (Clark’s wines)
• Postmodern Winemaking (Clark’s book)

Cheers!

So, like, what is this stuff, anyway?
I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available wines. Below is a wrap-up of those twitter wine reviews from the past week (click here for the skinny on how to read them), along with links to help you find these wines, so that you can try them for yourself. Cheers!

• 12 La Rochelle Pinot Noir Rose McIntyre Estate Vineyard (Santa Lucia Highlands): The soul of Provence going on vacation in Livermore. $24 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 12 Steven Kent Winery Lola Sauvignon Blanc Semillon (Livermore Valley): Thoroughbred racer, but showing its stuff over short distances $24 B >>find this wine<<
• 09 La Rochelle Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir (Santa Lucia Highlands): Svelte on top, spicy/fat on bottom, pretty all the way thru. $38 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 10 Steven Kent Merlot Small Lot Ghielmetti Vineyard (Livermore Valley): Everything's right w/ this promising – & very young – upstart $50 A- >>find this wine<<
• 10 Steven Kent Winery Lineage (Livermore): Throwing the Infinity Gauntlet in Napa's & Bordeaux's faces, Thanos throwdown style. $145 A- >>find this wine<<
• 10 Steven Kent Winery Folkendt Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (Livermore): The raspberries donned oak/herb chainmail & are digging in! $65 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 12 Steven Kent Winery Merrillie Chardonnay (Livermore Valley): Pears, pith, power, poise, personality, and probably peaked interest. $34 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 12 La Rochelle Saralee's Vineyard Pinot Meunier (Russian River Valley): Fascinating conversation between plums, rose petals & spice. $38 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 09 La Rochelle Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir (Sonoma Coast): A pretty Disney princess, smoking, sorting tats & growing out her armpit hair. $42 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 10 La Rochelle Deer Meadows Vineyard Pinot Noir (Andersen Valley): Open up the cupboard to find spices, but also dancing cranberries! $75 A- >>find this wine<<
• NV Montenisa Brut (Franciacorta): Serious, with apple & peach bread toast in between layers of toast, toast, & maybe some more toast. $35 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 07 Antica Fratta Essence Brut (Franciacorta): Floral & long, but there's a LOT of sweet, crusty, toasty junk all up in that trunk. $32 B+ >>find this wine<<
• NV Ronco Calino Saten (Franciacorta): Lavender, honey, apples, pear, fresh apricot, toast, bread, all served up to you buffet-style. $28 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 08 Azienda Agricola Fratelli Berlucchi Brut Millesime (Franciacorta): Snappy, smooth, elegant, but U better like things dry & toasty. $28 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 06 Gussalli Beretta Lo Sparviere Extra Brut Millesimato (Franciacorta): Kind of like ice cream meets bakery meets pure kick-ass. $25 B+ >>find this wine<<

When I include “unbearable cuteness” in the title, I am talking about unbearable cuteness. The kind of cuteness that is adorable and crushing at the same time. The kind of cuteness that requires vintage rosé Champagne, Australia’s possibly-best-in-country Viognier (from Yalumba), and vino from one of California’s more off-the-radar Pinot Noir producers to escape it (to keep up with the cuteness, all of the wines featured today have “quoted” fancy names… it will all make sense in a few minutes, okay?).

To wit: two five year old BFF daughters of separate families who, living many miles from one another and attending different schools, without communicating to one another asked their respective parents at the same time and on the same day if they could wear matching leg warmers that they both received as gifts.

That is the kind of unbearable cuteness I am talking about. Yes, one of the five year olds “belongs” to me. Eventually, as parents of the BFFs you need a double-date night just to forget about the power of cuteness like that. Which is what we did, and I, being 1WD, naturally use the opportunity of the double-date night as an opportunity to raid the wine sample pool (and incur a possible dinner tax write-off… just sayin’…).

Oh, and before you ask, I do not have pictures of these two kids together wearing their leg warmers, which is just as well because it would make your face explode due to overdose of concentrated cuteness. It’s times like these that I sometimes wish I’d had a boy, but those moments are only millisecond-term fleeting. Mostly, having a young daughter is like having 90% of your life become adorable, and I love it. Yeah, I know the Universe will pay me back later in the form of lecherous boys coming to the door asking her out on dates… and No, I am not yet okay with that.

Anyway… I swear to god that there is some wine involved here, so let’s climb out of the cuteness and talk about what Mrs. Dudette and I popped open with our dinner guests during said double-date night…

Read the rest of this stuff »

We’re wrapping up 2013 for The Punch Down in an iconoclastic way (c’mon, what did you expect?!??), as we welcome author, educator, winemaker, musician, consultant, Vinovation founder and, yes, wine iconoclast Clark Smith as our guest on Episode 9 of The Punch Down!

Smith has been ruffling feathers in the wine business since he dropped out of MIT forty years ago to pursue wine full time. Along the way, the company he founded became one of the go-to resources for wine enhancements and chemistry in California, and he founded WineSmith Wines. Smith also has a long-running column in Wines & Vines magazine, the best of which was compiled and edited into the recently released book Postmodern Winemaking.

If you’re curious about what happens to that juice before it gets into the bottle that you just bought, and if you’re a wine lover and rabble-rouser at heart, don’t miss our conversation when Clark Smith brings his erudite, opinionated, and witty voice to the TPD hot seat!.

Join us LIVE for the fireworks with Clark next Tuesday, December 10th at 1PM ET!

Cheers!