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The Vine : Wine Country Tastings Blog

Tasting and tripping to wines fresh off the vine.

TreeHouse Tasting No.28: San Saba Estate 2006 Pinot Noir -(Portland's Burning!)

» posted by Rich
on 11 Mar 2010

At first I thought this week's TreeHouse Tasting was going to feature a sparkling wine, as Lady Jess and I were doing the tasting while watching the Oscars on television (what? can't a treehouse have cable tv?). Then we decided to order a pizza. Well, that settled it, because Pinot is the only thing I can think of. Pinot and pizza. Period.

I had been sitting on this San Saba Estate Pinot Noir from Monterey for a year or so and decided it was time. I have been drinking a bunch of Pinot from the Sonoma Coast, and it was time to move it south a bit, you know?

Anyway, I popped that baby and gave it a good sniff. And man, if it didn't smell like roses, (it did). And when I think of roses I think of Portland, Oregon, the "City of Roses". But wait... there was also a nice hint of smokiness... like smoky roses. That's it! This wine was the aroma equivalent of Portland burning! As bad as that may sound... it smells really good. I mean really, really good.

When Lady Jess took her first sip she declared that it was the best wine she ever had, (I swear it was her FIRST sip of wine of the night). I really couldn't believe how much I liked it, too. I felt like I was eating raspberries... yummy raspberries. It just glides on the palate, so soft and balanced. It was too easy to drink! I think we're rating this wine 95 points with no reservations. It's a fair price at $29.

By the way, San Sabo is a great winery stop in Soledad, California... an easy trek from Carmel Valley, (see our Carmel Valley Review). Great people, and wines at very reasonable prices.

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I'm mad about Vintages (not really)

» posted by Rich on 2010-03-11 00:17:46

[For this next blog post, please read in your best Any Rooney voice. If you need a visual aid, please click HERE]:

Did you ever notice how people pay so much attention to vintages? What's the deal with vintages, anyway? Can a really good wine from one year really become a bad wine the next? That may have been the case back in the day before modern wine-making technology created a consistent quality you can count on.

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A glass of wine a day keeps the flab away

» posted by Rich on 2010-03-10 19:12:51

Everyone has probably heard about the new study that was published in the current issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine that states that a glass of wine a day can actually help women lose weight! This is another in a long string of the good and the bad studies about wine. This new study shows that it is possible that alcohol can speed up a woman's metabolism. This would make this, the glass-o-wine-a-day-diet, the hands-down greatest diet ever... ousting The Skinny Bitch Diet from the number one spot, (Sorry, Skinny Bitch...it was a good run).

If you missed it, a few months ago Decanter.com did a great article with a chart showing all of the health benefits and hazards of drinking wine, proven by years of studies that go along with it. These include a study that shows that wine causes cancer while another shows that it prevents it. We loved it, and posted up about it on TheVine. Read the full story below:

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Husch Winery - New WinoTripping Review

» posted by Rich on 2010-03-09 18:35:14

We just posted this brand new review of Husch Winery in Anderson Valley. This low-key joint is a great example of unpretentious wine tasting at a relatively small production winery.

Check the full review and profile with photos: Husch Winery - The WinoTripping Profile

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A Fraudulent Bottle Only To The Eye of the Beholder

» posted by Rich on 2010-03-09 11:27:23

With all the recent wine fraud cases popping up in the news, the fake pinot Noir and the Australian wine investment scam, it got me thinking about wine as a collectible. Much like fine art, it is rather difficult for a non-expert to tell a fake from a real Picasso painting or a real bottle of Inglenook 1941 Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley. And even the expert will need to do some close studying. I don't know anything about collectible wine, but it seems pretty easy to fake. A fraudulent bottle of Pinot Noir that has been cut with cheaper wines like Merlot, would probably pass for Pinot most of the time. And when you enter the high-stakes world of collectible and cult wines, fraud seems all the more likely.

The thing is, the collector of rare bottles of wine, like Chateau Lafite 1787, (the wine rumored to be once owned by Thomas Jefferson while in France - which was bought for $160,000 at auction)... is kind of asking for a scam. But I ask, are collectors buying a bottle like this, (or a bottle of 1992 Screaming Eagle), for the wine, or for the prestige attached to it? Are they simply adding it as a prize, like a rare stamp to a stamp collection, or are they really interested in the wine itself?

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TreeHouse Tasting No.27 - tercero 2008 Grenache Blanc

» posted by Rich on 2010-03-08 13:41:13

tercero wines 2008 grenache blanc

It was a sunny day in San Francisco and we'd just enjoyed a pleasant bike ride down to the beach and back. As we lied in a semi-napping state up in the TreeHouse, letting the breeze wash over us like the soft welcomed hands of a light massage, I thought, "hey, a nice glass of wine would be nice..."

This is my thought in many circumstances, but at this particular moment I was interested in a refreshing white wine. So I decided to go for one of the better bottles on the old rack. I pulled the tercero 2008 Grenache Blanc that I purchased at a winemaker tasting at the Winery Collective in San Francisco a few weeks ago.

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