For all of my talk about not digging big-ass wines, I sure do seem to end up talking about a lot of “good” big-ass wines.

Take this past Christmas, for example.

We host some of my wife’s family every third Christmas or so, as part of a rotation that has us visiting them in Florida and Washington on the other years. It’s a special time for me, because Mrs. Dudette has a great extended family, full of genuinely nice people who are kind enough to put up with me over the course of several days (primarily because they want to spend time with my daughter, I suspect… but I’m quite happy to settle for the delusion that they also enjoy my company). And when we host Christmas, Mrs. Dudette cooks a gourmet meat-and-potatoes feast in honor of her late grandmother, who succumbed to Alzheimer’s quite a few years ago but in her heyday apparently made a mean roast dinner.

The slow-roasted meat naturally gets me thinking about a big red, and for some reason, despite reservations, I find myself continually reaching for Mondavi Reserve wines for this holiday dinner thang. I mean, if Christmas dinner isn’t when you’re supposed to open up wines like these, then well the hell are you supposed to pop those corks?

I use the term “despite reservations” because, truth be told (don’t you hate that phrase, by the way? I mean, it’s not like I’ve been lying to you for years and am only now getting aroud to making statements with any veracity… ok, whatever…) I am always afraid that the Mondavi Reserve wines are going to burn me…

As I’ve written before in the context of pairing these wines with Christmas dinner, the problem is not that big-ass wines like the Robert Mondavi Winery Reserve Cabs are being made. The problem is that too many big-ass wines like the Mondavi Reserve Cabs are being made that probably shouldn’t be made.

But even so, the RMW Reserve has gotten a bit big even for its own over-sized britches in recent vintages, and in my view had hit dried-prune, high-octane levels that signaled the end of their being worth the relatively exorbitant, well-over-$100 price tag (the 2006 displayed particular largesse in its largeness). When the heat of those wines is really on, and when it’s enough to all-but-overshadow that killer To Kalon vineyard fruitiness… well, that’s not a recipe for success, folks.

But…

Generally, I was quite pleasantly surprised at the RMW wine samples that I decided to crack open for the meat-and-potatoes holiday meal, once again proving my anxiety to be a useless waste of (what many might consider a not-considerable amount of) mental energy…

2008 Robert Mondavi Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve (Napa Valley)
Price: $135
Rating: A-

Just barely making the Cab label designation at 85% (rounded out by nearly equal parts Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot for the remainder). Winemaking director Genevieve Janssens and crew are back on track with the 2008 Reserve Cab. Bottom line is that they’re sitting on fruit (from To Kalon and elsewhere in the Oakville Bench) that’s as good as it gets in the Valley, so we should expect the wine to be very, very good. And it is.

This is fine wine luxury for the Starbucks enthusiast – the more you like your mocha, the more you will probably dig this Reserve. The dark berry fruits are as deeply black as the anti-soul of Christmas Consumerism, but the tannins are silky and supple – enough so that the 15.5% abv didn’t seem like a hindrance. For my money, I loved what the wine was trying to tell me long after it calmed down in the glass, which is that it also had olive, sage and tea leaf aromas to share (and to spare).

2007 Robert Mondavi Winery Chardonnay Reserve (Napa Valley)
Price: $40
Rating: B+

Certainly the most reserved of the RMW Reserves I’ve had in several years. And it feels so odd to type that, given this wine got the full-on malolactic, barrel-fermented, sur lie aging treatment. But then, this big Chardonnay is everything that’s good about big Chardonnay – supple, luxurious, trying to compete with crème brulee for your attention, but all the while maintaining a sense of Chardonnay’s humbler crisp apple flavors, acidic backbone, and lemony goodness. I liked it enough at the price point to consider trying to find a second bottle to see how it might develop given 4 or 5 more years. Chablis it’s not, but if you were buying a bottle of RMW Chard expecting it to be Chablis-like then you need your head examined.

2007 Robert Mondavi Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville District (Oakville)
Price: $45
Rating: B+

This wine isn’t part of the RMW Reserve lineup, but gets the “honorable mention” nod from my Christmas day tasting (which included several other wines not paired with our holiday dinner). Lush, plush, silky, deep and velvety as your favorite pillow; several layers of splendid black fruits, along with real depth and hints of spices (courtesy of 4% Cab Franc, and over a year of barrel aging)… this really is how Oakville Cab ought to be, people: round in your mouth, warming to the soul, and unabashedly concentrated and fruity.  Please note that I did not say that all Cab should be unabashedly concentrated and fruity; we are talking about Valley floor Cab, here. Anyway, I set this bottle out for our guests, I blinked, and it was gone…

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Holiday Reservations (Putting Mondavi Reserves Under The Christmas Dinner Grindstone) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

…wine from “someplace else.”

On the hook for giving a wine geek a holiday gift this season? Here’s some advice for ya.

Skip the books.

Skip the gimmicky wine gizmos that take up way more kitchen drawer space than they’re worth in actually, tired-and-true utility (trust me on this one, I get samples of all of that sh*z and most of it isn’t worth the amount of air molecules it displaces in your home).

Skip all of it.

You really want to make an impression on your wine lover’s holiday season? Then don’t give him/her/it something that they’ll probably never actually use. Give ‘em something that they’ll drink, and will remember for a long time to come.

Give them something truly different: give ‘em wine from an off-the-well-trodden-path wine region…

The secret spice in this soup is the simple fact that no wine lover has tried it all. No way. Not by a long shot. I don’t care how much wine he/she/it happens to have in the wine cellar, you’re beloved wine geek has NOT tried vino from every wine-producing region in the world. Not yet, anyway.

And so, you have, for most intents an purposes, a near-infinite number of choices from which to draw for your splendid holiday surprise. Don’t even try to lie to me and tell me that the wine geek on your list has already had juice from…

• Baja California, Mexico
• Arizona
• Missouri (yes, really)
• San Juan, Argentina (here’s a great example)
• Tasmania
• Santorini, Greece (more on that lovely place can be found here in the archives)
• etc., etc., etc.

Need more inspiration? How about this – go local: any wine being made practically in your hometown? Grab a bottle and gift that shiz. And if you must buy a wine book, try something like Every Wine Tells A Story along with a bottle or two of some of the more off-the-wall recommendations offered by the wine geeks profiled therein. That’ll keep your wine geek busy after the jingle bell rings have long since subsided.

The point here is not that the wine you give has to be particularly great (though many of the above areas certainly are producing good stuff) – the point is that the wine just has to be different. It’s point is that you’re giving that wine geek what she/he probably wants most for the holidays: a mind- and palate-altering experience, another step along  their personal journey of wine discovery.

Chances are pretty good that over 80% of the hundreds of bottles in your wine geek’s [cue Darth Vader voice] “impressive…most-impressive!” wine cellar hail from less than 20 wine-producing areas. In fact, I will bet you a copy of my eBook and a wine soiree (ok, so not all of the gadgets suck… I admit it…) that previous sentence is spot-on, Nostradamus-level  accurate.

So be daring. Be different. Be remembered.

Don’t give ‘em more stuff – give ‘em a learning experience!

Cheers – and have a safe and awesome holiday season, peoples!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at And The Ultimate Holiday Gift For The Wine Lover On Your List Is… from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

Wishing you and yours a safe, jolly, and wine-and-wonder-filled holiday!

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Happy Holidays from 1WineDude.com from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

This week, one lucky commenter will be selected at random to win a pretty spiffy personalized wine gift box (a $45 retail value) from www.personalizedwineboxes.com!

Pictured at left, these wine gift boxes look pretty darn spiffy, and could make a very nice edition to your holiday gift list ( even if, like me, you primarily considered something like this a gift to yourself… you selfish little thing, you…).

Anyway…

Here’s the deal: In one week, I will randomly select a winner from the comments who will be able to design their own personalized wine box! The only catch being that you need to live in the U.S. (I’ve also been asked to add the disclaimer “wine not included” – but if you couldn’t figure that one out on your own then you have problems deeper than can be solved with wine alone).

Our comment topic? What’s the coolest ‘wine gift’ you’ve ever received?  Shout ‘em out!

To get us started here’s my pick…

Back in 2002, Mrs. Dudette gave me what I consider the coolest wine-related gift I’ve ever received: a tastevin (purchased, I believe, in Georgetown).

A matter of (very) brief explanation: the tastevin is the (somewhat ancient-ish) tool used by sommeliers to taste wine in dark wine cellars; it was usually constructed from metal and worn about the neck with a chain.

In the case of my gift, there is a coin inside the basin (which is the focus of the old, crappy digital pics inset to the left and the right), dated 1484 (the reverse side has inscriptions in Latin and what appear to me to to be runes, though I’ve never had time to perform any serious research on what the hell all of those might signify).

Of course, it’s a matter of conjecture when the tastevin was made (or even if the coin is, in actuality, from 1484 or was created much later).

In other words, we don’t know exactly where it’s from, or quite when it was made, or even when the coin inside it was made, but for me all of that doesn’t detract one iota from the absolute coolness factor of this thing.

And before you ask: No, I’ve never actually used it for its original, intended purpose (tasting wine in the dark)!

Cheers!

(image: personalizedwineboxes.com)

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Think Inside The (Wine) Box Giveaway: Personalized Wine Gift Holiday Edition from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

Welcome to the 4th of July weekend, people!  Time to win some sweet shiz!

To celebrate Independence Day, PersonalWine.com (owned by the same folks who pay me to contribute to the Wine Crush Blog) have teamed up with me to give away a bottle of red, and a bottle of white – each personalized with the winner’s own design, and delivered in a classy sheer blue bag!

Specifically, the red is a 2006 Wattle Creek Syrah Winemaker’s Barrel Selection ($24), and the white is the 2008 Wattle Creek Sauvignon Blanc Barrel Selection ($26).  Both will come in the sweet blue bag pictured on the right, after you design your own super-cool label for your winnings.

Red, white & blue.

Get it?  C’mon, work with me here!

Anyway, winning is easy – here’s how it works:

• Leave a comment on this post, describing what design you would go for if you had your own wine brand/label.
• In one week, I will randomly choose a winner from the commenters, who will work with PersonalWine.com to design their prize!

To get us started, I used PersonalWine.com’s handy on-line label designer to upload a preview of one of the new 1WineDude.com review badges that will be coming to the website in the future (more on that in a future post), and create my own kick-ass wine label (literally kick-ass – see below).  Sneak peak after the jump.

Ok – get commentin’!…

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at The Red, White & Blue PersonalWine.com Giveaway! from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!