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

• NV J.J. Vincent Cremant (Cremant de Bourgogne): Unleashing refined apple bubbly goodness to your palate with vinous kung fu precision. $19 B >>find this wine>>
• 09 Bastianich “Adriatico” Friulano (Colli Orientali): White peaches, almonds & “scout’s honor” true to the NE Italian grape’s soul. $19 B >>find this wine>>
• 08 Quinto de Roriz “Prazo de Roriz” (Douro): Drying, dusty and wonderful as the Douro itself. Pass the grilled sausages, please. $17 B >>find this wine>>
• 08 Kanonkop Kadette (Stellenbosch): Mr. Pinotage showed up, carrying buckets of black fruit & blacktop, & wearing big leather boots. $15 B >>find this wine>>
• 09 Indaba Chenin Blanc (Western Cape): Wow. This thing is putting on a tropical fruit clinic. Crowd pleasing (& cheap!) intro to CB. $10 B >>find this wine>>
• 08 Vale do Bomfim Tinto (Douro): Think hearty, brambly red fruit meets LBV pepper spice. And you ccan also think “screaming bargain.” $12 B >>find this wine>>
• 09 Loredona Riesling (Monterey): Those honeydew melons & limes are suffering from a bit of a shy streak in the aroma department. $12 B- >>find this wine>>
• NV Trapiche Extra Brut (Mendoza): Melon bread? Yeah, melon bread. Don’t worry, it totally works (especially with seafood cerviche). $14 B- >>find this wine>>
• 08 Cobblestone Arroyo Seco Chardonnay (Monterey): Hints of lime zest keep this big tropical island from being invaded by flabbynauts. $28 B >>find this wine>>
• 07 Terlato “Galaxy” (Napa Valley): Crowd-pleasing serving of fun, juicy red fruits with a healthy-proportioned side of smoked meat. $70 B+ >>find this wine>>

• 08 Boutari Kallisti Reserve (Santorini): Smokey, hazlenut vanilla goodness with an acid blast to rock your next scallop dinner. €15 B+ #
• 06 Boutari Vinsanto (Santorini): A bit too cloying & unbalanced even for this sweet tooth, but those who dig caramel syrup will enjoy €17 B- #
• 09 Boutari Assyrtiko (Santorini): A fair amount of heft, citrus, & astringency. And by "fair amount," I really mean "maybe too much." €9 C+ #
• 02 Boutari Kallisti Reserve (Santorini): Like an unsweetened honey-lemon cookie w/ oregano sprinkled on top. But in a totally good way. B+ #
• 09 Domaine Sigalas Assyrtiko (Santorini): Pure & clean grapefruit & citrus flower goodness, all deftly balanced & screaming for seafood. B #
• 09 Domaine Sigalas Barrel Assyrtiko (Santorini): Peaches & cream, lemons & flowers, decent & tasty. Still in diapers,w/ a long life ahead B+ #
• 04 Domaine Sigalas Vinsanto (Santorini): You'll forgive the syrupy-ness for the toffee, honey, orange zest, sultana & general "kick-ass." A- #
• 09 Argyros Assyrtiko (Santorini): Like a well-written witty movie dialog between Ms. bracing acidity & Mr. oaky mellowness. $20 B+ #
• 07 Argyros Mavotragano (Santorini): Brambly dark cherry & tough tannic bite make it interesting. Too bad they won't make much of it. $24 B- #
• 89 Argyros Vinsanto (Santorini): Phenomenal. Brandy, toffee, caramel, roasted nuts, sultana & espresso that you could sniff for days $100 A- #
• 09 Koutsoyannopolous Assyrtiko (Santorini): Good acidity doesn't make up for subdued fruit & a boozy edge. Oh, what might have been. C #
• 07 Koutsoyannopolous Abellones (Santorini): Red blend that delives berry cobbler, a nice mouthfeel & (alas) artificial cherry action. B- #
• 06 Koutsoyannopolous Vinsanto (Santorini): The caramel is achingly sweet, but raisin, prune & toffee await the brave of teeth. B+ #
• 09 San..Torini Winery Assyrtiko (Santorini): Crisp & approachably "international" in style. Only serious citrus lovers need apply. $22 B #
• 08 San..Torini Winery Nykteri (Santorini): Assyrtiko that's seen barrel for nutty richness, somewhat at the expense of better balance. B- #
• 05 San..Torini Winery Vinsanto (Santorini): Vicsous & lucious, with a superb mouthfeel that makes up for wily V.A. peeking out its head. B+ #
• 07 Canava Roussos Nykteri (Santorini): Apparently they wanted to kill their lemony Assyrtiko with booze and oak, and they almost succeeded C #
• 04 Canava Roussos Caldera (Santorini): Deep dark & spicy red fruits that honor its island home's deep, dark & hot volcanic namesake. B+ #
• 99 Canava Roussos Vinsanto (Santorini): You just might mistake it for a sweet PX; a really, really, really damn good sweet PX, that is. A- #
• 02 Canava Roussos Mavrathino (Santorini): You might not think that liquid fig pudding is a very good thing. In this case, you'd be wrong. B+ #

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Has the case for excellent Walla Walla Syrah been definitively demonstrated?  Q.E.D.?

I’m not going to go quite that far.  But I will say that they might be pretty damn close, especially in those cases where the balance beats out the brawn in their Syrah bottlings.

Two wine producers that I encountered recently in Walla Walla (while there for the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference) in particular made good cases (ha-ha!) for Walla Walla Syrah being the wave of the future; one which officially took part in the WBC activities, and one that didn’t (in fact, their winemaker skipped town during the event).

The first of these was Rasa Vineyards, led by the Naravane brothers who have engineering backgrounds, and are fascinating folks to talk to, provided you can follow their scientific leanings.  They were part of a panel about WA wine at Three Rivers Winery (part of the WBC events), and certainly talked up the potential of Walla Walla Syrah when I asked the panel what they thought the future held given that Walla Walla is still a relatively young wine producing region.

The proof, fortunately, was in the juice, and their appropriately-titled 2007 QED wine, sourced from Walla Walla and Yakima fruit, is powerful, expressive, but balanced; it’s also expensive at $50 – but overall a decent value when compared to more expensive but not-quite-as-solid Syrah-based wines being made elsewhere on the Left Coast.

The second was pretty much the entire portfolio of wines from Rotie Cellars, who were kind enough to host a handful of us bloggers in their downtown Walla Walla tasting room while lunch activities took place during day one of the WBC.  Winemaker Sean Boyd is certainly playing with fire with their wine names (“VdP” for example), which I am sure the French would be none-too-happy about, but he has some Syrah-based wines with significant promise; they might have been some of the most deftly balanced WA reds that I’ve ever tasted.

But with all of this focus on the future going on, the WA wine scene, I quickly learned, would do well not to forget its past…

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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…

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