Sign up for the petition to Protect Wine Place & Origins
If you don't sign the petition you are a terroirist which means you are willing to pay $100 for a 'Port' from California or a Champagne made in the great appellation of South East Calgary.
And if you are willing to pay these prices it I just painted a picture and signed Picasso's name and you owe me 10 million dollars.
Wine professionals will always tell you to store wine at a constant temperature and never keep it in a place that is too hot or too cold. Well this is fine with the wine you have at home, but how do you know the wine made its way from the winery to your cellar without hitting an extreme temperature? How do we know it wasn’t cooked or frozen? It could have been left on some truck in the middle of the Canadian Prairies when the temperature hit -30C. Do we really trust the AGLC, they are part of the government. How do we know the wine store properly stores the wine? Maybe they had no room in the front so they stored a bunch of wine in the back room by the furnace? I think it would be interesting to have temperature gage on a bottle of wine to find out if the bottle has been in an extreme temperature. I am picturing a small little strip on the side of the bottle that would turn a bright red when the bottle has been exposed to high temperatures for too long or turn blue when the bottle has been in a cold environment for too long. Not all of the bad wines are due to the cork?
2000 Cline Syrah
Sonoma Coast, California
14.5 %
15.50 - Bin 905
This was really disappointing. I am starting to dislike Cline Cellars. Either my palate is getting more refined or this is just a bad wine. Low fruit...is this even made from grapes? The alcohol seemed so high if felt like drinking cough syrup. I don't pour out a half of a bottle very often but today is one of those days. I am sure you guessed but I won't be picking this up again.
Music Match - Motley Crue(see previous entry)
Last night I went to see Motley Crue and Aerosmith. I am not a big fan of either, I have no Crue albums and only the Toys in the Attic album from Aerosmith, but I thought the concert would be fun. The Motley Crue performance was way beyond its vintage date. Since The Crue was a pretty shitty band to start with, I would equate there performance to a Thunderbird Wine that has been left out since 1984 behind a Mcdonald’s sitting on top of that grease only garbage can in the scorching hot desert weather of Phoenix. 20 years past there prime, that is if Thunderbird is every in its prime.
Aerosmith on the other hand was completely different. Their performance was more like a 1978 from a First Growth Chateau. A wine that is big, well balanced and with lots of flavour, you know exactly what you are getting. The hype and price of a First Growth lived up to its billing. But then again anything you serve after Thunderbird is going to be spectacular.
It’s the end of the year and every publication is creating some sort of Top List of such and such of the year. Well here is my list of Wine articles that should stopped being written!!! I mean please?!&
1 – Wine 101 articles. If someone wants to know more about wine they will go and search for what they want to know. They are not going to find out about wine from a 500 word article in the middle of some newspaper section called The Scene or What’s Happ’n or Stuff You Don’t Give a Shit About but we are Going to Write About Anyway so You Look Cool While You are Reading it in Starbucks.
2 The Screwcap Revolution. – The screw cap is no more a
revolution than the New Coke. People do
not care about how a wine is closed.
They just want to drink a wine that is good. The 0.0005 percent of people who store wines for years do care
about how a wine is closed and they are not going to buy screwcaps or stelvin
closures or plastic corks or anything else that won’t make them money. These articles also always report that a
wine can still be tainted if a screwcap is used. Think about it people, pop in bottles can go flat, canned food
goes bad and yes the screwcap is not perfect and air can get in a bottle and
ruin a wine. Have you ever seen a
deep-sea diver in a suit with a screw cap on it?
3 I am not drinking any of that fucking Nighttrain. Sideways was released to theaters over three years ago, but apparently every article that talks about Pinot or Merlot or whatever the new fad is, always mentions Sideways. Now Sideways was a good movie and that Sandra Oh is a good actress but she as well as the filmmakers have all moved on. So all the wine writers out there need a new cliché. If you are a real writer I am sure you can think of something new instead or rehashing the same old tired saying like some hockey player. Come on I am sure you can give it 110%, play one game at a time, score more goals than the other team and even say that Riesling is the new My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
4 The Top Wines of…fill in the blank. Lets face it when we read this lists in a wine magazine we all know it really says the Top Wines you will Never get to Taste because they are Too Expensive or way too Limited or the Winery Paid us a Lot to Say So.
Music Match – Anything by Richard Cheese.
This winery is essentially an urban winery. It is located on the outskirts of Seattle. So it is no more located in the Columbia Valley as Calgary is located in the Okanagan Valley. With that being said this wine was very good. Very dark in colour with berries, cedar and almost a bacony aroma and those who know me know I like bacon. To sound like a wine snob this wine was well balanced and smooth. I didn't purchase this wine, it was a gift from my sister, but I would definitely buy more and drink it again.
Music Match - The Doors - You Need Meat
2005 Castillo de Malueda
Bodegas y Vinedos de Jalon
Grenache Tempranillo blend
Calatayud DO, Aragon, Spain
13.5% - $12 - Metro Vino
This wine is a lot bigger than I expected. It could be because its a 2005. It has cola and spice on the nose and not much fruit. The palate is all about tannins, big tannins and not much else, well there could be a bit of red fruits and maybe chocolate but...did I mention the tannins? The wine wasn't bad, the second day I had it open it got better, so it would make me think that it would age awhile and would probably be better, I would buy again.
Music Match - Ben Harper
