I don’t know bumpkis about baseball.

Never have.  I prefer sports where guys hit each other at high-velocity (football, hockey), or where the mere act of finishing a game is near-miracle of aerobic survival skills (soccer).  As for all of the numbers that flash up on the screen when someone comes to bat? I don’t call that fun with stats, I call that torture; forget beating or water-boarding, you wanna get details on terrorist attacks from a suspect, submit them to an endless series of baseball games… that ought to get them talking in a hurry.

But Phillies fever is (rightfully and deservedly) sweeping the local populace out my way, and I do appreciate how hard it is to hit a baseball thrown in the major leagues – it might be the most difficult thing to do in all of professional sports.  So I know the value of a homerun – and “home run” is an apt descriptor for the results of the recent Frederick Wildman twitter tasting event with Burgundy producer Olivier Leflaive.

I have such a troubled history with Burgundy; in my opinion, there is no more inconsistent a wine experience on offer for so much money as there is in the vinous produce from rolling hills of the Burg’.  At this point, I think I’d have better luck in playing craps than in buying Burgundy wines, and to this day it is just about the only wine region that I won’t touch with my own money without a close friend experienced in Burgundy wines at my side in the wine shop (fortunately, I know a lot of experienced wine people).

And yet, there exist producers like Olivier Leflaive that can steer you so right so often – for a (sometimes steep) price, of course.  But if you have the cash, you’re in for a treat when it comes to Leflaive, particularly the 2008s…

Read the rest of this stuff »

It’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack…!

Wines of Germany will be launching their very own TasteLive.com events page, and to celebrate they will be kicking it off with a redux of the on-line live tasting that we’d originally scheduled for the end of October.

I’ll be your blogger co-host for the on-line tasting, which will take place at 8PM ET / 5PM PT on December 3rd.  This event is gonna be good – both upstate New York’s House of Bacchus and Manhattan’s Roger Smith Hotel will be hosting tweet ups for the event, and the wines are all kick-ass Rieslings from four of Germany’s premier Riesling-producing regions. 

These wines all do a great job of representing their place of origin and how the terroir of those areas impact the final flavors of the wine produced there (they’re probably the next best thing to being there yourself):

Selbach-Oster, Riesling, Kabinett, Mosel, 2007/2008

Leitz, Riesling, "Eins Zwei Dry," Rheingau, 2008

Dönnhoff, Riesling, Nahe, 2008

Darting, Riesling, Durkheimer Nonnengarten, Kabinett, Pfalz, 2008

Join me on Dec 3rd, get the word out, and don’t forget to RSVP at TasteLive.com. 

Cheers!

Tonight marks the finale of the month-long salute to German wines taking place at TasteLive. October has more-or-less been “Riesling Month” for me (not that I don’t drink Riesling pretty much every month) in helping to get the word out about the events being hosted by TasteLive and Wines of Germany. 

Tonight’s twitter tasting event, at 8PM ET, is the final October Wines of Germany tasting event and will feature a handful of bloggers tasting through selections of Schloss Reinhartshausen wines from the Rheingau (the region typically home to Germany’s most austere and powerful Rieslings).  There will be one more public TTL event on Dec. 3rd that will feature a sample of Rieslings from various German producers – that’s one where you will be able to join in and taste; more to come on that from both me and the folks over at TasteLive.  For tonight, you’ll be able to follow along with the tasting action at the TasteLive website, or by following the #TTL search term using your favorite twitter client.

Here’s a bit about tonight’s highlighted producer, as lifted from the TasteLive website:

Schloss Reinhartshausen (Reinhartshausen Castle) has been identified with production of rare and majestic German Rieslings since 1337. Schloss Reinhartshausen embraces 15 separate vineyard sites located in the vicinity of the townships of Erbach and Hattenheim. These include a significant portion of the legendary Grand Cru Erbacher Marcobrunn vineyard, as well as the neighboring Erbacher Schlossberg site in its 15-acre entirety.

More on the wines for tonight’s event are below.  Interestingly, the TasteLive website lists a Trockenbeerenauslese among tonight’s selections, and I received an Auslese (more on those terms can be found here).  Not sure which one is correct.  I don’t have any experience with the wines of Schloss Reinhartshausen – the notes below are not my words but have been taken from the importer’s descriptions, so take those with a grain of salt.  Having said that, the descriptions have certainly whet my appetite…

Read the rest of this stuff »

Looks like the Wines of Germany Twitter Taste Live event scheduled for tonight is going to be postponed.

Seems we’re victims both of not having enough time to get the event into full-gear, and also of too many willing participants having too much trouble getting a hold of the wines in time for the tasting.  Not a winning strategy – and so we must postpone.

“Postponed” in this case definitely means rescheduled and does NOT mean cancelled.  The new date will be announced as soon as possible – currently we’re leaning towards early December so we don’t collide with other scheduled TTL events in November, and also so we don’t collide with the upcoming Turkey Day festivities. 

So – it’s looking like we will ramp back up with a TTL event of those tasty Rieslings in early December.  More to come soon.

In the meantime, may I offer you a picture of a different take on the German Wine Queen?

Cheers!