Sometimes, you just blunder into things. You pull a bottle of wine off the shelf and think, oh what the hell, it’s less than $10, if it sucks, I’ll just make a sangria out of it. Then you pop the cork, pour a glass and realize that you’ve stumbled onto a little gem. In this case, it is a gem from the DO Calatayud in Spain.

Much like France, in Spain they identify their wines by region. The DO stands for Denominación de Origen and is a system put in place to help protect the names of regional foods. However, it is a system most often associated with wines. The bottom line is that the DO will inform you of where the wine came from, but not what’s in it.

In this case, the Garnacha de Fuego is made by Bodegas Ateca. This is a relatively new partnership between the Gil family of Jumilla and importer Jorge Ordonez. However, the vines themselves are over 75 years old. Oh and in case you missed it, the wine is made from 100% Grenache (Garnacha in Spanish) juice.

More...

About a month ago, Ms Cocktail came home with a wine that she said she had heard about somewhere or other. As with most things wine related, this promised to be an adventure. I don’t always take other people’s word about  whether a wine is good or not. A lot of people I know may enjoy wine a lot but they don’t have that educated of a palate. Therefore, they drink what they like and pass those recommendations on. Let me be crystal clear on this subject. This is perfectly acceptable behavior and I don’t want them to change a thing. In fact, I prefer that they approach wine this way rather than trying to pretentious and annoying in their certainty.

On the other hand, that doesn’t mean that what they like is something that I will particularly like. We all have different palates as well as likes and dislikes. Which is why some of us attempt to describe the wines we drink with terms that other people will be familiar with. It tastes like jam or apricots or chocolate. This gives a basis for making wine selections that are agreeable with our palates. Just because someone says, “This wine is fruit forward with lots of blackberry” doesn’t mean I will like it, but it puts it in the realm of something I generally like.

This is where the adventure starts. Because I may have a preconception of what someone else thinks the wine tastes like, that doesn’t mean that I will taste the same thing or like what I taste. I therefore approach each wine the same way regardless of what I’ve heard about it. Which means that I dismissed the glowing report Ms Cocktail had heard and stuck the bottle in my wine rack and didn’t think much about it.

More...

Those of you that have been following this blog for a while will notice that while I do rate a fair number of wines,  most of them are in the under $25 category. There is a reason for this, I’m not rich. I would love to be dropping big bucks every night on a wine that is supposedly fantastic or have a wine cellar where I can just immediately pop down and grab a world class wine at a moment’s notice. Sadly, that just isn’t the case.

However, what I have found is that I can go and have a fair bit of fun searching for those wines that represent great value and excitement in that under $25 category. Seriously, when you come across something that just blows you away and you’ve only spent $12 on it, that is an awesome find. You can go back and buy a case (getting the appropriate discount) and stash a bunch away for whenever you want them. That’s my goal, to find those underpriced gems and to let you folks know about them as well.

Today’s offering falls squarely in the category of underpriced gem. It is a Spanish wine from Bodegas Eguren in Vitoria and it has two things going for it. First, it comes in at right around $10 a bottle which really makes me smile. Second, it is made from blend of grapes not usually seen in Spanish wines. the Tempranillo grape for sure is Spanish, perhaps being the most common Spanish grape out there. The Shiraz grape however, is a grape better known from other regions, principally Australia and the west coast of the United States and France where it is known as Syrah. In fact, since the grape is typically known by the Syrah name in Europe, it is a bit of a surprise to see it called Shiraz here. (For a more thorough discussion on name of the Shiraz/Syrah grape, you can start with the Syrah page on Wikipedia.)

More...

By now, most of those effected by the Blizzard of ‘09 should have found a way to dig themselves out from under the crushing weight of snow they woke to find yesterday. I know that here in Virginia, the use of the word crippled  is not to strong to describe the state of the area. Of course, the Commonwealth of Virginia is simply not prepared, nor should they necessarily be, for a storm that dumps a blanket of two feet of snow across the entire state. In addition to the woes of the snow removal crews, there is the fact that people down here can’t drive worth a damn to begin with, adding snow to the mix is a sure fire recipe for disaster.

Traffic problems aside, the Blizzard of ‘09 did give me an opportunity to do something I was hoping that I would get a chance to do but wasn’t certain that I would have the time. That is to make Christmas cookies. Ms Cocktail’s mom takes this to the extreme, sometimes making as many as twenty varieties for the Christmas season. I have much more modest goals; just getting one variety made is a serious accomplishment. So when we heard that a big storm was coming, Ms Cocktail and I headed to the store to pick up the necessary ingredients for the cookies and of course, the requisite eggnog for the chefs.

More...

I was in the Snooth forums  a while back discussing the merits of the Norton grape. For those of you that don’t know, Norton is a grape native to North America and it was first cultivated here in Virginia. Actually, let me rephrase that. While some people think it is native to North America, it has pretty much been determined that it is a hybrid of one or more Vitis aestivalis grapes (those native to Eastern North America) and one Vitis vinifera (native to the Mediterranean, central Europe and southwestern Asia) grape. Which specific ones are not and may never be, determined. It is also the official grape of the State of Missouri.

It was from this fact that our discussion began. It seems that a wine made from the Norton grape won a gold medal in the 1873 Vienna World Exposition. It was supposed to be the next big thing in the wine world back then. One thing I am most definitely not certain of is whether the wines of that time were judged by the same criteria as we judge them today. It is quite possible that we would judge a wine of similar character today as swill, immediately to be poured out or let go to vinegar. In any case, the Norton grape never seemed to catch on in popularity back then.

Fast forward to the new millennium. Currently, the single largest planting of Norton is at Chrysalis Vineyards in Northern Virginia. An astounding number of Virginia and Missouri wineries make wines from this grape. It grows exceptionally well in the Eastern US and produces a grape that is similar to Concord but slightly less sweet. It can also produce a wine without a characteristic known as “foxyness”, something that native American grapes are known for.

More...