THANK YOU to everyone who participated in the 67th Wine Blogging Wednesday! 

It was a blast hosting the event, and I was mightily impressed with the high quality of the articles that were written around the theme of choosing what wine you’d use to introduce white wine drinkers to the pleasures of wed wine imbibing.  I’m gonna have to become a better writer to keep up with you people! 

Also, I should get my act together and post these wrap-ups more quickly after the event… oh well…

For those looking for an easy answer recommendation of what red to use on white wine drinkers, you’re out of luck - we got a lot of variety in the answers to this March’s WBW challenge.  Fortunately, many of the participants have conducted field research on willing (?) victims, so you can witness the impacts and specific results (successful and otherwise) via their posts.

I thought it might be fun to wrap-up the WBW proceedings by grouping the participating blog posts by variety / wine region / style, so that you could compare and contrast the different results within similar wine choices – which were much more varied than you might first expect from folks recommending similar wines.

So, without any further fanfare from me, here are the results. 

Ok, I lied, I have one more bit of fanfare first: If you’re a wine blogger, get yourself in touch with WBW founder Lenn Thompson with theme ideas, and offer up your blog as a place to host one of the future WBW events, ’cause it’s a hell of a lot of fun, and you’re sure to learn some interesting shizz after reading the contributing articles!…

Read the rest of this entry »

Today marks the 67th (!) edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday, and I’m honored to be hosting the event again. 

For those playing along at home, the gist of WBW is that it brings together multiple people across the wine blog-o-world to review wines on the same date based on a unifying theme.  For #67, we chose “Seeing Red For The First Time” as the clarion call of united wine geekiness (a.k.a., “the theme”).  Here’s how this shin-dig goes down:

To participate, you’ll need to pick a red wine that you would use to introduce a white wine drinker to red wines for the first time.  Think of a person that only ever drinks white wine, and answer the question: What Red Wine would I use to convince that white-wine-only person that they should also drink reds?

Include a review of the wine, and be sure to tell us why you chose that style of wine, or that wine in particular (or both).

A potentially challenging but fun theme, I hope – and I can’t wait to see what you’ve all come up with to try to tempt white-only drinkers over to the Darker Side, so to speak.

My choice, of course, was picked out quite some time ago since I had some advanced notice of the theme, but I had a trickier time than I’d expected in fulfilling my WBW duties.  In fact, while I wouldn’t call my attempt a total failure, I’m pretty sure it ain’t a total success, either. 

But before we get into the wine itself (which was not a media sample this time), let me unravel for you the tapestry of my logic on this puppy…

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m thrilled to be hosting the next Wine Blogging Wednesday (#67) right here on 1WineDude.com, which will take place on Wednesday, March 24th!

I haven’t hosted a WBW event since November 2008 (WBW #51), so I wanted to make sure that I had a really cool theme for the event – and I think the one that WBW founder Lenn Thompson and I agreed on is pretty cool and will generate some great discussion.

The Theme

This month’s WBW theme is Seeing Red For the First Time.

To participate, you’ll need to pick a red wine that you would use to introduce a white wine drinker to red wines for the first time.  Think of a person that only ever drinks white wine, and answer the question: What Red Wine would I use to convince that white-wine-only person that they should also drink reds?

Include a review of the wine, and be sure to tell us why you chose that style of wine, or that wine in particular (or both).

We’ve deliberately kept this theme open-ended so you can go as crazy as you like in your choices.  ANY still red wine is eligible (including Rose wines, provided that they’re made primarily of red varieties).

Would you ease them into the world of reds with an off-dry Rose? Or go full-bore and knock their socks off with a classic, expensive, explosive fruit bomb?  You decide!

The Logistics

The way that WBW works (in summary): You get a wine that lines up with the theme, you review said wine, post your review and related thoughts, and send a link to the host, who will then summarize the event and write a wrap-up with a link to your review.

So, to participate in this round of WBW, post a comment to 1WineDude.com on or before March 24th (either comment on this post, or to my WBW post that will appear on March 24), and include the link to your review.

Easy-peasy-nice-and-squeezy.  Please spread the word, this one is going to be fun and has the chance to introduce many of us to Reds that we might not otherwise be trying – and that’s always a good time!

I know that I’m looking forward to reading what you come up with!

Cheers!

(image: matteogonet.com)

Today marks the 58th Wine Blogging Wednesday event, this month hosted at the witty, pull-no-punches and cleverly-named Gonzo Gastronomy blog.

The theme selected by Gonzo ringleader Katie Pizzuto is one that’s near & dear to my heart – the pairing of wine and music, both topics that I’m passionate about seeing as how much of my free time each of those endeavors takes up!

I’m not actually submitting a separate post for this WBW – instead, I’ll offer up my recent wine & music pairing giveaway, in which you’ll find lots of tasty wine & jazz pairings in the comments section.  However… I did want to throw some WBW love over to Katie, both for keeping it real on a regular basis, posting thought-provoking and entertaining articles, and picking a fantastic theme for this month’s WBW.

I’m looking forward to seeing the tasting “notes” (ha-ha!) from this WBW roundup.

Cheers!

(images: gonzogastro.wordpress.com)

I need to go on record right now that I hate Jeff Lefevere*.

Why do I hate Jeff…  Well, for one, he has the best-looking wine blog in all of the blog-o-world.  If his blog design were a person, it would be Warren Beatty, and it would walk around with a smile and a demure but slightly aloof stance, confident that your wife would do him in a heartbeat and not even think twice about you or your kids, because he’s just that cool.

He (I mean Jeff, not the personified Beatty-esque incarnation of Jeff’s blog) is also a phenomenally talented writer; his prose puts the writing on the majority of wine blogs (including some of those penned by professional writers) to shame.

So, there’s jealousy,  That’s clearly one reason.

Also, I don’t understand at all his Vin de Napkin comics, and it pisses me off that I’m possibly too dumb to appreciate them.

I guess that’s also jealously?

Anyway, after today, Jeff pissed me off even more because he’s managed to host the only Wine Blogging Wednesday topic that has completely stumped me (I’m not usually at a loss for words… like, ever…).  The theme is “California Inspiration,” which Jeff intended to be a homage to the late and inspirational CA wine icon Robert Mondavi, as this week marks the first anniversary of Mondavi’s passing.

The idea is that we should recount a moment of inspiration, a story centering around a specific wine.

Jeff… you magnificent bastard… you have stumped me.  Why?  Because while capturing the essence of a fleeting inspirational moment in time might be a talented trained journalist’s idea of a writing warm-up exercise, it’s a bear of an activity for hacks like me.

Curse you, Lefevere!  May the fleas of one thousand camels infest your armpits!!!

* – Note: I don’t actually hate Jeff Lefevere.  In fact, he is an extremely nice guy with whom I had the pleasure of hanging out during the first Wine Bloggers Conference.  I’m just stalling because I don’t have a wittier intro.

Wait. I take that back.  I actually do have a story.  So, I need to go on record right now that I no longer hate Jeff Lefevere.

My Story

You know, if it weren’t for two winemakers, and two specific wines, I might not be writing to you right now. 

A few months ago (circa September 2008), I had contemplated giving up wine blogging entirely.  I loved writing, and I loved wine.  But I wasn’t sure that wine blogging was going to be viable for me.  I had a full-time career at a big CPG company.  My wife was pregnant.  I loved playing in the band, and didn’t see myself curtailing those activities or short-changing my family in the battle for my non-work time.  I was pretty sure that wine blogging was going to have to go (it wasn’t exactly paying the bills, either).

There were new wine blogs cropping up pretty much every week.  It was a crowded field, and while the majority of those that I’d met who were involved with wine were amazing people, there were enough ‘bad apples’ gunnin’ for me that I felt a little… battle weary.

Then, I got contacted by the staff at Opus One and Penns Woods wineries – two of the finest purveyors of red wine on both coasts – to tour their wineries.  Why did they ask me to do this?  Because of my writing on 1WineDude.  The results of those visits sparked something in my pea-sized, alcohol-wizened brain.  “I’m just some punk kid from Delaware – what the hell was I doing talking to these amazing winemaking teams?  Holy crap, I’d better take this thing more seriously.”

After getting uber-wine-geeky with Opus One’s Michael Silacci and Penns Woods’ Gino Razzi, I recounted the experiences in the virtual pages of 1WineDude, and put their wines head to head in a blind tasting.  Links to the resulting posts are below, and they remain some of my favorites, probably because they convinced me not to hang up the wine bloggin’ spurs:

• "A Sense of Urgency": The Reinvention of Opus One from the Ground Up
• "No Shortcuts": How Penns Woods is Reinventing Pennsylvania Wine From The Top Down
• Blind Tasting Smackdown: East Coast Vs. West Coast!

Since that time, 1WineDude has seen steady and progressive modest success, whether you measure it in terms of income, traffic, subscribers, or – best of all – in the number of readers, bloggers, industry folk, and winemakers that I consider to be friends.  If I’d given up last year, I’d have missed out on a crazy amount of life-expanding and enriching experiences.  Finding the right balance between family, career, music, and wine is a constant struggle for me – but the rewards on all fronts are worth the effort.

So in my case, we have a sort of minor tragedy turned into a sort of minor victory.  Thanks to two wines.  Sort of.

Cheers!

(images: sacbee.com, 1WineDude)

This exciting edition of Tales of the Purple Monkey has Plumboo (the monkey) and me (not a monkey but likely descended form them) traveling to the exotic Middle East, specifically crossing the oft-disputed borders into Israel to sample kosher wines as part of the Wine Blogging Wednesday blog carnival.

This month’s WBW is being hosted by The Cork Dork, and is focused squarely on kosher wines as the Passover event comes to a close.

    I decided to explore a couple of extremes with this review, so we’ll be looking at two very different wines that have a few common threads uniting them – they’re both kosher, they’re both results of the relatively recent explosion in quality fine wine from the region, they’re both Petite Syrah based wines from Israel, and they’re both pretty damn good.

According to Hugh Johnson, most countries that produce wine have some form of kosher wine on the market, and they’re usually a long way removed from the sacramental wines and kiddush that once made kosher synonymous with “crap” when it came to wine (instead of it’s actual meaning, which is “pure”).  Kosher winemaking basically follows the same process as un-kosher winemaking, with the exception that the winery workers must be religious Jews and there should be nothing un-kosher added during the winemaking process.

Twenty years ago, Tom Stevenson reported in the New Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia that “fine wine is nonexistent in the Levant.”  Now, in the book’s 4th Edition, he highlights that due to a “boom in boutique wineries” over the past decade (it should also be noted that an influx of California wine technology didn’t hurt, either), we now find “growth, diversification, and exhilarating promise in the wines form Lebanon and Israel.”

Between those two countries, Israel has far less land under vine than Lebanon, but exports much more of its increasingly yummy final product into the international kosher wine market.  According to the World Atlas of Wine, a fine wine culture has taken hold in Israel, and appears to be built to last. 

What’s truly amazing is how short our collective historical memories are when it comes to Israeli wine in general.  For centuries Israel lay on the wine route that ran from Egypt to Mesopotamia, and wine use in Jewish culture dates back literally before their recorded cultural history.  The word wine crops up over 200 times in the Bible.  Viewed that way, Israel’s fall from wine grace was a temporary blip on the historical radar.  Given Israel’s mild climate, varied soil types and state-of-the-art irrigation, it’s a wonder their wine quality revolution didn’t happen more quickly (for more on Israel’s winemaking history, check out Andre Domine’s Wine).

The proof, though, is in the puddin’ – or in this case, it’s in the Petite Sirah. 

After unfortunately missing an NYC expo of Israeli wine earlier in the year, I was fortunate enough to receive samples of Israeli wine from a few different sources.  Hence the opportunity to feature two of them here, both from the same grape but miles apart in terms of style.

First up is a wine from Recanati’s Reserve label, a (mostly) Petite Sirah (with a little Zinfandel mixed in) from Galilee.  New World style all the way, with dark blackberry jam, spices & pepper notes.  Absolutely screams fro something grilled (and I’m not talkin’ veggies).  If you’d told me it was from CA, I’d probably have believed you – which is not to say it’s a copy-cat wine, but that it’s achieved very good quality and excellent concentration of fruit.

Next up, I tried another kosher offering from Carmel, which was founded over 125 years ago by Baron Edmond de Rothschild, owner of Château Lafite and a Zionist.  Carmel is now one of the largest wine producers in Eastern Mediterranean.  Their 2004 Carmel Vintage is a port-style dessert wine made form Petite Sirah and clocks in at a hefty 18% abv.  On the nose, it’s got elements of dried blueberry and blackberry syrup, with smoke (compliments of many months aging in French oak) following up the rear flank.  The palate is all dried prune and sweet maple syrup.  I was really digging this – in fact, you would dig almost anything after 3 glasses of this (part from the hangover you’d endure later).  You could let your imagination run a bit wild with potential dessert pairing for this one, but you’d do just fine sipping it on its own after a hearty meal.

I suppose the moral of this story is that kosher wines are no longer crap, in fact they’re pretty f—king good.  They had me at Shalom, anyway.

Cheers!

(images: jewcy.com, palmbay.com, natashascafe.com, 1winedude )