The Official Wine Thread

Its so hard to keep buying because you have to wait for the aging.

I've just started buying old stuff.

Chassagne-Montrachet - Tasted an 2002 from Paul Pillot from this region.

Do they all taste like that, if yes. I'm grabbing a case.

I love the wine tastings they have every weekend at the Hollywood K&L. Get to meet cool oenophiles too

THEY HAVE WINE TASTINGS AT THE HOLLYWOOD K&L?!

I am an idiot and have lived my life all wrong.

Opened a bottle we bought while we were visiting Napa. It's fine. Tastes more like a Napa cab than a merlot. Which is fine.



erictheobscure said:

THEY HAVE WINE TASTINGS AT THE HOLLYWOOD K&L?!

I am an idiot and have lived my life all wrong.

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Yeah, every Saturday from 3-5:30. 10 bottles for $20

Bordeaux was last month, Piedmont was the week after, Germany (Riesling) is next week

Might be there for the Riesling tasting if I'm still in town (plans all up in the air because of some developments re: my girlfriend's wife's work).

It sucks living in the hinterlands.

Okay, sometimes it doesn't suck living in the hinterlands. Just found out I'll be having dinner with one of my favorite Paso wine makers and his wife Saturday.

Piob makes it sound like he lives in South Dakota or something

so quick question: what's the pairing guidelines for fruit vs. minerality? I can't seem to find anything one way or another besides Oysters and Muscadet.



GraphicNovelty said:

so quick question: what's the pairing guidelines for fruit vs. minerality? I can't seem to find anything one way or another besides Oysters and Muscadet.

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There's no hard and fast pairing rule but IME "minerally" wines are pretty good with seafood especially ***** fish. Fruit is such a broad category. I would suggest pairing with food

Half the time I think pairing is BS and then sometimes I think a good pairing is awesome. The rest of the time I'm too drunk to care.

Im not so sure on "minerally" either. Generally when I read tasting notes describing minerality it's almost always high acid white wines and vice versa. Plants don't suck up minerals in the soil all the way to the fruit in quantities human beings can taste (i.e. growing in slate doesn't mean fruit has more slate-like compounds). There's also thousands of different minerals. Most of them don't actually taste of anything. It's such a broad term that only started to see usage in the 80s.

Or maybe I just can't taste it well. Closest I get to minerality is salinity and maybe something close to mineral water.

I had this awesome Bordeaux tasting. Had like three of premier crus (Margaux, Lafite, Haut Brion), chateau angelus, and some other stuff like leovilles las cases and figeac. One of the premieres cru was too young but like mid 2000s. I remember thinking the older figeac was more pleasurable. The rest were older than me. Angelus was pretty awesome. Underneath all the fruit and structure I distinctly remember it tasting a little bit like fernet menta with like earthy flavors with a hint of mint.

Also Riessec R was so good. Semillon Sauvignon Blanc blend. Lots of acidity this weird like tropical fruit notes. I want more dry Sauternes. Also some Provence or Tavel rose would hit the spot

A couple of years ago the owner of Chateau Angelus was in town and we attended an awesome dinner featuring him and his wines. Downtown, big, trendy art studio space set up for dinner...and I remember one of the passed appies was a foie gras bonbon. He was very cool, older, very French gent, well turned out with a mane of white hair.

Minerality vs. acid...my best shot to demonstrate it is to taste a quality producer from Chablis with a mineral profile vs. a new world higher acid Chard.

Pairings...I've had some simply awesome pairings I'll remember the rest of my life and then there's the other 95%.

My impression based on research articles is that minerality and more than half of the profile of wine in general is the yeast composition (bio-techie background). That doesn't mean you can't taste it, but just an interesting consideration. I am skeptical of the blanket term terroir for that reason. I know this doesn't contribute to the pairing comment, but I wanted to go on this tangent, too.



Piobaire said:

A couple of years ago the owner of Chateau Angelus was in town and we attended an awesome dinner featuring him and his wines. Downtown, big, trendy art studio space set up for dinner...and I remember one of the passed appies was a foie gras bonbon. He was very cool, older, very French gent, well turned out with a mane of white hair.

Minerality vs. acid...my best shot to demonstrate it is to taste a quality producer from Chablis with a mineral profile vs. a new world higher acid Chard.

Pairings...I've had some simply awesome pairings I'll remember the rest of my life and then there's the other 95%.

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I've had a lot of these wines considered mineral and I can taste a difference between "new" and "old" world but I still don't quite get minerality. To me the difference is sometimes in fruit levels and quality but more so the type of acid. ripe tropical fruit notes than like stone fruits. Old worldish wines have this kind of tension in the acidity that I don't know how exactly to describe. Like fx pichler always feels very tense to me compares to new world Riesling and gruner.

Or like there's a clear difference to me in the willamette valley between wines grown in volcanic clay/Jory soil and wines in sedimentary soil. there's like a rich concentration of fruit in wines from clay but but it's not that one tastes like clay and the other like rocks. And it's different from etna wines that tend to have a similar concentration in fruit but have this ashy taste.

I dunno. I just imagine that minerals would either not taste like anything or there would be such a variety "minerality" seems like an odd broad term



Principle said:

My impression based on research articles is that minerality and more than half of the profile of wine in general is the yeast composition (bio-techie background). That doesn't mean you can't taste it, but just an interesting consideration. I am skeptical of the blanket term terroir for that reason. I know this doesn't contribute to the pairing comment, but I wanted to go on this tangent, too.

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I have often wondered why we don't hear much about yeast in wine. Given that yeast has a very prominent role in the flavor profile of beers, I would assume the same to be true about wine. Different breweries have proprietary yeasts and spend a good deal of time and money managing yest strains. Only occasionally do I see that a wine called out that it is fermented by "native" yeasts - but I'm not sure if that means that they did not add (pitch) yeast, or what exactly. Also, if not called out as native fermented, what yeast is being pitched? How is it selected?