Wine Knowledge: The August 2017 Newsletter

The August Newsletter from the Wine School of Philadelphia

Old World Advanced Sommelier Certification

Summer School is upon us! We just finished a fantastic week of the CORE program. Next up is the Old World Advanced Sommelier Certification.  Whether or not you are planning on becoming a sommelier, this is the program you need to take. This is a deep dive of all the top Old World wine regions, including Burgundy, Bordeaux, Priorat, Rioja, Tuscany and the Piedmonte.

This program will earn you the Old World Sommelier certification from the National Wine School, plus it counts towards earning your Advanced Sommelier certificate and your Master Level Sommelier credentials. This is our summer accelerated program. Evening classes run from August 21st to the 26th.  All wine lovers are invited to attend this program! 

https://www.vinology.com/class/advanced-old-world/2017-08-21/

 

Wine Report by Keith Wallace

Wine Report | Wine Ratings

The following are the top bottles available in the PA Wine & Spirits Stores this month. Some are Chairman’s Selections, some are on sale, and some are just miss-priced. They all share the same three characteristics:  They are exceptional wines, they are exceptionally well priced, and they are available in the Philadelphia metro region.

One of my jobs at the Wine School is to find the greatest wines available. We need them to run wine classes, after all! This list includes my top finds for the month.These are my top finds for the past month.

Feel free to use our wine finder to locate these bottles near you. I will be publishing expanded ratings on our wine review page starting next week. However, I always give our newsletter readers the first shot at these great wines. Cheers!

-Keith

 

Kieran Robinson 2012 “R Five” Syrah

Kieran is a Philly native who got his start at Chaddsford Winery as a cellar rat back in 2005, back when Eric Miller was still the winemaker. He then jumped around California and France, learning the craft at a number of wineries. For the past five years, he’s been making wine in Sonoma at his own facility.

However, his heart is still in Philly:  each of his wines have Philly-centric names (Jawn and R5). He even still vacations on the Jersey shore: Avalon looms large in his Instagram account.

This bottling is from Sonoma’s Bennett Valley. It balances the finesse of the Northern Rhone with the dense fruit and oak-driven panache of Northern California. Savory smoke and burnt wildflowers on the nose with cassis and creamy blueberry. Layered tannins and glycerine smoothness are pushed forward by a limousin oak sweetness. A fruit-bomb of a finish is balanced with black pepper and cardamom.

$19.99  | In the Wine & Spirits Stores in Pennsylvania

92 Points | Wine Report by Keith Wallace

 

Massena 2012 The Moonlight Run, Barossa Valley

One of the greatest bottles of GSM (Grenache-Syrah-Mourvedre, the classic Rhone blend) coming out of Australia these days. Massena is really putting in the overtime with this one.
It has the full-bore take-no-prisoners attitude that is the signature of Aussie wine. But that isn’t enough to keep our fancy. This one is remarkable because it manages to balance out BIG with complicated.
There are Asian 5-spice notes that tangle with the candied cherry notes. There are wild rose notes that keep the melted chocolate flavors from getting out of control. And there is smoke to keep the bacon flavors from getting to, well, bacon-y.

$16.24  | Wine & Spirits Stores in Pennsylvania

93 Points | Wine Report by Keith Wallace

 

Anzivino 2010 Gattinara

Aromas of crushed lilac, rose water, and sage. Rum raisin and cherry compote fill in the edges with a bit of wood smoke. On the palate, it is elegant, with bright acids and finely grained tannins. Flavors of chocolate and liquorice are balanced by fresh red fruit and game. Aged in old Puncheons (very large oak barrels ) for over two years, and another two years in bottle.

$19.99  | Wine & Spirits Stores in Pennsylvania

90 Points | Wine Report by Keith Wallace

Tormaresca 2012 Trentangeli Castel del Monte

This is a Super-Puglian wine: a big boisterous blend of Aglianico, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon.  It is both accessible and elevated, with cassis, espresso, and toasted vanilla barrelling through the fleshy structure; There are also beautiful notes of wet earth and savory spices that open up through the finish.

$17.99  | A Chairman’s Selection from the Wine & Spirits Stores in Pennsylvania

91 Points | Wine Report by Keith Wallace

Venus La Universal 2013 “Dido” Monsant

A glorious bottle of wine with more pedigree than Prince George of Cambridge.
This wine shows little if any oak, which only amplifies it’s elegance and class. Dried lavender on the nose, with blue fruits and a wisp of forest floor. Notes of smoke and mineral intermix with orange blossoms and tart cherries. Medium bodied with a sexy lushness that is backed up with structured tannins and an open, appealing freshness. The finish turns toward darker fruit, rich savor, and black pepper.

$99.99  | Wine & Spirits Stores in Pennsylvania

93 Points | Wine Report by Keith Wallace

 

Chamisal Vineyards 2013 Estate Chardonnay, Edna Valley

Daydream of those buttery-but-bright chardonnays of lore? Wishing for those happy days listening to Depeche Mode and noshing on brie from Canada? If so, grab a few bottle: this is the classic 80’s style chardonnay.

This bottle has the toasted almond and butterscotch overlaying key lime and blood orange zest. There is plenty of oak-derived coconut butter and vanilla, like a nice day at the beach. A core of crunchy acid to keep it all from going kitsch. It’s very much in the Puligny-Montrachet style that made Chardonnay famous in the first place.

$15.99  | A Chairman’s Selection from the Wine & Spirits Stores in Pennsylvania

91 Points | Wine Report by Keith Wallace

Wine Knowledge and Customer Support

Need some help? Have a wine question you need answered? check out our wine knowledge forum right here: https://www.vinology.com/wine-knowledge/

 

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Hope to see you soon!

Keith Wallace
Director
Wine School of Philadelphia
109 S. 22nd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103
www.vinology.com

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Contact Points (A Decade Of Cà Maiol’s Molin Lugana)

Lugana bubbles on the riddling rack at Cà Maiol

Walter Contato knew potential when he saw it.

Like an inordinate number of Italians before and after him, this successful Milan-born businessman took holidays in the sometimes-too-charming-for-words (as in, how-the-hell-are-we-gonna-get-the-car-through-these-narrow-Medieval-streets?!?? levels of charming) Lake Garda town of Sirmione. As an inordinate number of successful white businessmen seem to want to still do, Contato eventually decided that he wanted to become a wine producer, and chose the site of his presumably favorite vacation spot – home to the Lugana wine region – as the place he would try his vinous hand.

It worked out; Contato eventually went on to help establish the Consorzio Tutela Lugana (still in existence today). In the 1990s, he handed over the reigns of his wine venture, Cà Maiol, to his mellifluously-named sons Fabio and Patrizia.

Contato picked a great spot, from a wine-growing perspective; the nearby Dolomites protect the vineyard area (now measuring about 100 hectares in Lugana) from the cold winds coming out of the north. They vineyards sit on enviable calcareous soils. They even have the requisite Older Building, erected in the early 1700s.

I visited Cà Maiol as part of a Lugana-area media jaunt, but I’d had ample access to one of the company’s flagship Lugana releases – Molin – long before that, during previous visits to the region, L’Anteprima Lazise, and even as part of library tastings during that most recent tour. And so I thought that I’d share a bit of perspective on how the Molin fares in bottle over a decade or more (SPOILER ALERT: it fares well)…

Cà Maiol’s Fabio Contato shows off the wares

We’ll start with the most brand-spankin’-new Molin release, and work our way backwards a bit from there. Molin is part of Cà Maiol’s linea selezione lineup, and is named after the company’s old cellar. generally, Molin is a blend of the best Turbiana grapes from Cà Maiol’s oldest vines, and sees a bit more skin contact (48 hours or so) in an attempt to give this white more structure. That’s a delicate, tricky game; Turbiana skins have ample bitter polyphenols, so if you don’t know what you’re doing from a pressing and contact perspective, then you can end up with a wine that’s less “acerbic bite” and more “bit in the ass bitter.” But in this case the family’s last name, literally translated, means “contact,” so one would hope Lugana lovers would be in good hands, right?

 

2016 Provenza CàMaiol ‘Molin’ Lugana (Lombardy, $NA)

I was (pleasantly) surprised at how full-throttle this young white was; it’s heady in its white flower and white pepper aromas, and pithy in its lemon-rind texture and tropical fruit flavors. The finish is fairly long, and more-than-fairly mineral. While it’s not without elegance, it’s absolutely assertive in just about every way that a Lugana can be. In five years, it ought to be generously honeyed, and it will probably drink “sexy” form now through that time.

 

Cà Maiol Molin 2011 (& for color comparison, a `97 Riserva)

 

2011 Provenza CàMaiol ‘Molin’ Lugana (Lombardy, $NA)

This is where patience with Lugana pays off. Honey, almonds, blossoms, lemon drop, ripe peaches, tropical fruits, and toast… you can sniff a wine like this for hours. It’s mouthfeel is powerful, with dried fruits and saline. It’s juuuuuust over the hump now, six years on, and starting its downward trajectory. But still enjoyable? Hellz yes.

 

2004 Provenza Ca’Maiol ‘Molin’ Lugana Superiore (Lombardy, $NA)

Thirteen years young at the time that I tasted it, this is like having a wine from a totally different grape versus tasting Lugana when it’s a newborn. Dried orange peel, dried flowers, saline, spices, and pith; this is toasty, nutty, intriguing, and elegant. At this age, it’s the kind of drinkable delicacy that has to be paired carefully with food (don’t look at me, this one might be above my food-matching pay grade), so do yourself a favor if you’re ever fortunate enough to be in its company: enjoy it on its own and just count yourself lucky.

Cheers!

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Copyright © 2016. Originally at Contact Points (A Decade Of Cà Maiol’s Molin Lugana) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

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Chamisal Vineyards 2013 Estate Chardonnay, Edna Valley

Chamisal Vineyards 2013 Estate Chardonnay, Edna Valley

 

Daydream of those buttery-but-bright chardonnays of lore? Those happy days listening to Depeche Mode and noshing on brie from Canada? There is always going to be a place for this style of wine: this is the classic Puligny-Montrachet style that made Chardonnay famous in the first place.

It’s got the toasted almond and butterscotch overlaying key lime and blood orange zest. There is plenty of oak-derived coconut butter and vanilla, like a nice day at the beach. A core of crunchy acid to keep it all from going kitch.

This bottle earns it’s 91 point rating.

The winery is moving into bigger production these days. While this bottle has been a core of their identity, they are now bottling a Stainless Chardonnay, along with this one. However, that bottling will not use estate fruit.

One of the reasons they have been amping up production is because the winery has been part of the publicly traded company Crimson Wine Group LTD (CWGL) since 2008. This is the company that also owns Pine Ridge, Seghesio, Archery Summit, and Seven Hills.

These are some top-notch vineyards, but sometimes it’s important to know when and how the wine trade really works. And sometimes it’s with a wine review.

Chamisal has it’s own winemaker, Fintan du Fresne,  CWGL employs a chief winemaker for the whole corporation. That is Craig Williams, who was the  Senior Vice President of Winegrowing at Joseph Phelps Vineyards.

If all of this sounds a little less romantic, then this will pretty much cause you to freak out:

Sentiment for Crimson Wine Group LTD (CWGL)

Crimson Wine Group LTD (CWGL) institutional sentiment increased to 5 in 2016 Q4. Its up 4.71, from 0.29 in 2016Q3. The ratio has increased, as 5 funds increased and opened new holdings, while 1 sold and decreased their stock positions in Crimson Wine Group LTD. The funds in our partner’s database now have: 10.21 million shares, up from 4.78 million shares in 2016Q3. Also, the number of funds holding Crimson Wine Group LTD in their top 10 holdings was flat from 0 to 0 for the same number . Sold All: 0 Reduced: 1 Increased: 2 New Position: 3.

Crimson Wine Group, Ltd. is engaged in producing and selling ultra-premium and luxury wines. The company has market cap of $250.77 million. The Firm operates through two divisions: Wholesale Sales and Direct to Consumer Sales. It has a 60.03 P/E ratio. The Wholesale Sales segment includes all sales through a third party where prices are given at a wholesale rate whereas Direct to Consumer Sales segment includes retail sales in the tasting room, remote sites and at on-site events, Wine Club sales, and other sales made directly to the consumer without the use of an intermediary.

It is up 0.00% since August 14, 2016 and is . It has underperformed by 16.70% the S&P500.

Wine is delicious, but it can also be big business.  There still are plenty of small producers, and we always make an effort to highlight them. Sometimes, like now, we also want to pierce the veil.

 

 

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Wine Reviews: Weekly Mini Round-Up For August 14, 2017

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!

• 13 Schild Estate Moorooroo Shiraz (Barossa Valley): You'll wanna drink it until the cows come home; it might just age that long, too. $100 A >>find this wine<<
• 15 Bird in Hand Nest Egg Chardonnay (Adelaide Hills): Adorned all over, but not weighted down by it,never really losing its balance. $65 A- >>find this wine<<
• 16 Donnafugata SurSur Grillo (Sicilia): Perfect for those Summer evenings during which you can hear the chirps of its namesake. $20 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 13 Fattoria I Veroni Chianti Rufina (Tuscany): Chewy, vibrant, delicious & seemingly tailored made for whenever gourmet pizza night is $15 B >>find this wine<<
• 15 Aia Vecchia Vermentino (Toscana): Easy to get your head & arms around, but requires a relatively large hug for you to do so. $13 B >>find this wine<<
• 13 Abadia Retuerta Seleccion Especial (Vino de la Tierra de Castilla y Leon): Sporting ninja levels of focus, potency, & intrigue. $30 A- >>find this wine<<
• 16 Hacienda Lopez de Haro Blanco (Rioja): All you need is fun; all you need is fun; all you need is fun, fun, fun; fun is all you need. $9 B >>find this wine<<
• 16 Etude Grace Benoits Ranch Pinot Noir Rose (Carneros): Rose crafted from the ground up; & that's lucky – & textural – for us. $25 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 16 Olianas Vermentino (Sardegna): Apparently, a little amphorae fermentation is good for the V, & in this case, for the soul, too. $23 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 12 Alessandro Rivetto Vigna Rionda Barolo (Serralunga d'Alba): Lifted like a kite, tight like a tourniquet, grippy like a glove. $145 A >>find this wine<<

Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today!

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Copyright © 2016. Originally at Wine Reviews: Weekly Mini Round-Up For August 14, 2017 from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

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Preservation Situation (August 2017 Wine Product Roundup)

Due to family vacationing, I’m getting a slight jump start on the monthly wine product review roundup (I’ve got plenty of wine coverage coming, so don’t worry your pretty little inebriated heads over that, ok?). And, thankfully, I’ve got two fairly-priced wine preservation gadgets from the sample pool that are absolutely worthy of your (sober) consideration.

First up is the ingenious little Repour Wine Saver (a 4 Pack runs about $9). The Repour is the brain child of chemist Tom Lutz, and employs similar oxygen-absorbing tech used in the produce industry. The idea is that the slightly top-heavy but also non-toxic repour is used in place of the bottle’s original closure after opening, and chemicals in the Repour attract most of the oxygen in the bottle, thus prolonging the life of any wine you have left over in the bottle. Effectiveness is, naturally, reduced the longer you leave the bottle unstopped, and the more open space that’s left in the bottle, etc.

The Repour was run through some independent lab tests, has the nod from some sommeliers and wine pros, and in my limited experience works, almost too well, causing some of the wines I “Repoured” to close up temporarily. The only real drawback is that the Repour is a one-and-done product (you basically use one per bottle) and needs to be discarded after each bottle is finished. It will definitely get you several extra days of drinking from an open bottle of vino; the company claims that you can get up to a month, but anyone who is doing that either doesn’t known how to sell wine (in on premise settings) or doesn’t know how to drink it (in consumer settings)…

The other product highlight comes via the Modern Wine Preserver by St. Vine (a vacuum Pump with 2 Reusable Bottle Stoppers, about $25). Now, I know what you’re thinking and I can feel your eyes rolling… those vacuum pump thingies do NOT work!!! I get it… and in most cases, I think that you’re right; the rubber stoppers that come with many vacuum pump wine preserver sets end up losing suction and afterward are no better than sticking the original closure back on the bottle and putting it into the fridge.

The St. Vine solution to this issue is to employ reusable, BPA-free, dishwasher safe aluminum stoppers with push-button tops for releasing the closures. This product was, by far, the easiest and most effective vacuum-pump-style wine preservation solution that I’ve yet encountered. After several days of stopping up a delicate white wine in my fridge, the closure was just as tight and secure as the day that I pumped the hell out of it and first popped it on; and the wine inside was still fresh as daisies. YMMV, as they say, and bear in mind that when you’re pumping air out of the bottle (thus helping to preserve the leftover wine), you’re also likely pumping out volatile compounds (i.e., aroma and flavor, which is what you are paying for in the first place when it comes to wine). But… if you feel compelled to go the vacuum pump route, this is as good a solution as you’re likely to find at the moment.

Cheers!

Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today!

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Aces In The Hole (A Nizza DOCG Deep-dive For MyNameIsBarbera.com)

image: MyNameIsBarbera.com

The latest article in my storytelling Monferrato journey is now available over at MyNameIsBarbera.com, and in it we take a deeper dive directly into the terroir (and I mean down to the dirt level!) of the venerable Nizza DOCG.

Those of you who have been following along with my Northern Italian antics might recall that we already compared Nizza Barbera wines to James Bond, and I need to warn you that I inject that comparison with a healthy dose of prose steroids in this most recent piece. You have been warned.

What I didn’t have opportunity to dig into during the penning of this article was the specifics of my personal experience with older Nizza wines, which came via the excellent talents (and, thankfully, well-stocked wine library) of the venerable Tenuta Olim Bauda. I close with a handful of pics from my 2016 visit to that beautiful estate, ostensibly to increase whatever jealous rage I’ve already induced by mentioning the library tasting (warning, cute winery-dog-eating-grapes included)…

Cheers!

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Wine & Health through the Ages: A Medical Wine Knowledge Article

Gundlach Bundschu Label, Circa 1889

This wine knowledge article written by Keith Wallace of the Wine School was originally published by HealthFocus International in December, 2008 .
HealthFocus is a marketing research and consulting firm specializing in consumer health & nutrition trends.

Wine must be a magical elixir. Otherwise, how can we explain why a restaurant wine list often turns a CEO into a pouting child?  I have seen powerful doctors in bespoke suits turn into doe-eyed wall flowers with nothing more than quick twist of a corkscrew. Wars have been waged and religions sanctified in the name of wine.  No less an authority than Plato said “nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was ever granted by the gods to man.”  Obviously, this stuff is powerful arcane stuff that mere science cannot explain.

 

Or can it?

Medical Wine Knowledge

 

Throughout history, wine has been seen as both healthful and beneficial. As early as 2000 BC, the Sumerians were using wine medicinally.  Hippocrates himself was a proponent of the health benefits of wine, as were most physicians in the ancient world. By the middle ages, wine was being used to clean surgical wounds, and as a base for many homeopathic tinctures.  Above all, wine was seen as a safe substitute to the often polluted waters in and around cities and towns.

 

In the early modern age, wine continued to be embraced as a healthy beverage.  En route to the Americas, the Puritans stocked more wine & beer in their ships than water.  Can you guess what was served at that first Thanksgiving dinner? (hint: it wasn’t cranberry sauce).

 

At the same time, writers such as William Vaughan in England were writing books recommending a balanced diet that included red wine. A century later Louis Pasteur would conclusively write that “wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages.”

 

Wine is obviously great, the equivalent of a glassful of rainbows and unicorns. You can almost hear the angels singing…except for one nasty little secret… wine gets you drunk.

 

For this paragraph, we are going to have to turn back time. Swing back past the grey hospitals of the industrial era, around the schooners docked in Boston harbor, over a freshly painted Parthenon, and land smack dab on the right bank of the Nile River.

 

If we can quickly shuffle through the papyrus scrolls of ancient Egypt, we will find the first known denunciations of public drunkenness; hundreds of them. This is the eternal conflict that draws a direct line from the ancient world to today: drinking in moderation may be healthy, but drunks are really annoying.

 

The first half of the 20th century saw an international push to do away with drunkards once and for all. For the first time in history, large sections of the western world faced complete prohibition of alcohol. The world was changing in profound, radical ways, but what matters to this article is just a very small thread:  In the USA, Prohibition severed us from the eons of wine knowledge.

It’s been over seventy years, and the country still is having a hard time trusting Benjamin Franklin’s anecdote that “wine is sure proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

 

The first renewal of faith came in 1991, when the television show “60 Minutes” ran an expose on what they dubbed “The French Paradox.” The show featured a study that showed that the French suffered a much lower percentage of heart disease than Americans, despite enjoying a cholesterol-rich diet. Wine, red wine in particular, was cited as the cause for this paradox.  Sales of red wine skyrocketed overnight.

 

More than a decade later, the scientific studies have stacked up and the results are encouraging: Plato was right, after all. Modern medical research suggests that moderate consumption of red wine (1-3 glasses a day) may decrease the risk of some diseases including (take a big breath): Angina Pectoris, Peripheral Artery Disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Thrombosis, Ischemic strokes, Renal cell carcinoma, Thyroid cancer, Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Diabetes, Peptic ulcers, Gallstones, Kidney stones, and Osteoporosis.

 

The downside? Heavy drinking reverses all the health benefits, and adds a few nasty diseases of its own, including alcoholic hepatitis. If you smoke and drink, you also run higher risks for nose and throat cancers, along with breast cancer.

 

In the end, all available data shows that wine drinkers probably live longer than their tee-totaling peers. So with the holiday season rapidly approaching, grab your corkscrew, and have a glass in celebration of 4,000 years of good health.  Let’s see what type of wine knowledge scientists discover in the next decade. 

 

Keith Wallace, the most well known misfit in the wine world, is the founder of the Wine School of Philadelphia, creator of the Philly Uncorked show, and the wine columnist for Philadelphia Style Magazine. Keith also occasionally works as an expert witness for civil court proceedings, as a winery consultant, and as an editorial reviewer for Barron’s.

Mostly, Keith is just happy he drinks for a living.

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