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!

• 10 Hourglass Estate Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley): Berry cobbler, plum liqueur glaze, gravel plate, wooden fork, dash of awesome. $155 A >>find this wine<<
• 10 Hourglass Blueline Vineyard Cabernet Franc (Napa Valley): How lovers should meet; nearly exploding w/ tension, power &amp; edginess. $135 A- >>find this wine<<
• 10 Hourglass Blueline Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley): Like an emotionally-charged soy sauce/cassis/gravel menage-a-trois. $125 A- >>find this wine<<
• 10 Hourglass Blueline Vineyard Merlot (Napa Valley): No escaping the complexity, fruity-sweet-sexy largesse, or the general largeness $75 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 10 Hugel et Fils Hugel Riesling (Alsace): Almost sweet but definitely electrifying; maybe the most gulpable Hugel in several years. $22 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 04 Bodegas Franco-Espanolas Rioja Bordon Gran Reserva (Rioja): Familiar like an easy chair, or a bowl of comfort food on a raw day. $24 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 11 Simonsig Kaapse Vonkel Brut Rose (Stellenbosch): Funky floral cool modeena, performed with a side of freshly ripened red berries. $24 B >>find this wine<<
• 09 Pina Napa Valley Wolff Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (Yountville): Rich, demanding &amp; driven; plums playing hot potato w/ dried herbs $85 A- >>find this wine<<
• 09 Pina Napa Valley Ames Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (Oakville): Refined, broad, tinged w/ herbs; practically the mayor of Oakville. $85 A- >>find this wine<<
• 09 Pina Napa Valley D'Adamo Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley): Both hot &amp; sweet, in a silky, come-hither-big-boy kind of way. $75 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 09 Pina Napa Valley Firehouse Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (Rutherford): More like fire-juggling, &amp; nearly worthy of cirque du soleil. $85 A- >>find this wine<<
• 09 Ferrari-Carano Tresor Red (Sonoma County): Thick enough that you could stand a spoon up in it; but it'd be a mineral-rich spoon! $58 B+ >>find this wine<<

In between bites of grilled chicken pita BLT at Four Dogs Tavern a few weeks ago, I looked up across the table at fellow PA wine educator Bob Trimble. Chew, chew, chew. Swallow. Lift of the glass, sip, gulp. Smile.

“The thing about this wine,” I said, “is that it probably tasted yummy when it was bottled… and it still tastes yummy… and it probably tasted yummy at every point along the way; that’s thirty-four years of yummy!”

Those of you who hate the descriptor “yummy” when it comes to describing a wine can bite me; this was was f*cking yummy.

Y-U-M-M-Y.

We were drinking what Bob called “Joan’s wine” – a thank you gift to him for helping a friend sort through some older items in her wine collection. Our yummy lunchtime still treat was pulled out of its original cardboard box (remember when bottled wines came in those?), and was “kept under the drapes!” and away from sunlight for a long time, according to Bob.

The most interesting thing about the wine, to me, was that our 1979 Marqués de Riscal probably had no right to be drinking as well as it did – this was a Crianza, the lowest man on the Rioja aging totem pole. But at our lunch, it was kicking the shiz out of several younger Reserva and Gran Reserva wines I had from other producers when I visited Rioja last year…

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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!

• 05 Conde de Valdemar Reserva (Rioja): To find this much leather, funk & sass together, you’d need to get to a Village People concert. $22 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 11 Dr Pauly Bergweiler Wehlner Sonnenuhr Riesling Kabinett (Mosel): Like vampiric drinking of the souls of limes & honey blossoms. $28 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 10 Estampa Reserve Assemblage Carmenere Cabernet Sauvignon Cabernet Franc (Colchagua Valley): Blackcurrant glove, green herbal fist. $15 B >>find this wine<<
• 06 Travaglini Il Sogno (Gattinara): Successfully channeling the spirit of a roast beef in balsamic and spiced plum reduction. $125 A- >>find this wine<<
• 10 Hermann J. Wiemer Dry Riesling Reserve (Finger Lakes): Lithe & sturdy lime bones, juicy, ripe peach muscles, & a floral jumpsuit. $28 B+ >>find this wine<<
• NV Taittinger Nocturne Sec (Champagne): Did you know they made sweet apricot bread in bubbly form? No? Well, now you know, ok? $95 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 08 Wieninger Gruner Veltliner (Vienna Hills): Buffed up, has been hitting the ripe fruit gym hard & is showing the heft to prove it. $18 B >>find this wine<<
• 05 Chateau Mont-Redon (Chateauneuf-du-Pape): With sinister laugh, it extends its dark fruity cloak, inching closer to envelop you… $30 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 09 Strub Roter Schiefer Niersteiner Orbel Riesling Spatlese (Rheinhessen): Petrol, lime, fennel & a crap-ton of harmony for the cash. $18 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 11 Mulderbosch Cabernet Sauvignon Rose (Coastal Region): Simple stroll on a gravel path, but a lithe & lovely & raspberry-filled path. $12 B >>find this wine<<
• 11 Mulderbosch Chenin Blanc (Western Cape): It’s forging its wool coat for a stint among the tart-but-lush-and-creamy tropics. $15 B >>find this wine<<
• 11 Mulderbosch Sauvignon Blanc (Western Cape): Sassy, tossing its grassy boa of sweet citrus & tropical fruit over its shoulder. $17 B >>find this wine<<
• 09 Gundlach Bundschu Mountain Cuvee (Sonoma County): Like Gunsmoke, only with prunes & tart red plums, facing off in the dust. $24 B+ >>find this wine<<

A vintage Sekt, a northern-Italian inspired Napa white blend, a Vintage Port from a sleeper of a producer in a not-so-sleeper of a year, and a single vineyard, old vine Chilean Malbec. All have taken the #1 spot in previous “vintages” of the 1WD Most Interesting Wines of the Year list. Believe it or not, the MIW list is now in its fifth consecutive incarnation, and it sure as hell ain’t getting’ any easier to produce each year!

Both the number and quality of wines that I sample increases exponentially each year, and so the competition (such as it is) for those that stand out as somehow being the most special in some way/shape/form increases dramatically as well.

Having said that, there’s a crap-ton of very good, but not very memorable wines out there… and I tasted a LOT of those to get to the ones on this top ten list.

Having said that, I feel somehow emotionally cheated with the list I’m presenting to you today… because so many excellent wines that I tasted in 2012 are missing… wines that could have been on here if it were a top 25 or top 50 list.

This list, as long-time 1WD readers already know, is not a “best of” or “highest rating” or “circle jerk” comparison (no mater what the PR folks do with it!). It’s intended to be a list of wines that stood out, to me, as being particularly interesting, high quality and full of complexity; an attempt to shine an additional spotlight on vino that I found to be among the most compelling drinking experiences I had this year.

A few more moments of preamble: these are not wines released in 2012 (though I try to favor recent releases, so that you have a chance of actually trying them), they are wines that I tasted in 2012.  Not all the wines I tasted in 2012 qualified – the wines have to be at least somewhat available (also so that you have a shot at trying them). Things got expensive again this year; not sure what that says about me, or the wine biz in general, but not all of the vino on this list is stratospherically priced (though a few are – sorry, I gotta call this stuff as I see/taste it!).

I invite you to take a gander at previous vintages of the Top 10, to see how things have evolved over the last five years: 2011, 2010, 2009 & 2008. Reactions, exclamations, bitching/moaning, exaltations, and the like are all, of course, welcome. But most of all, I hope you enjoy the walk down 1WD memory lane.

Oh, yeah – and this year, at one spot in the list we have a tie, so technically there are eleven wines in the list (go ahead… flame me up for it… you know you wanna…).

Enjoy!…

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