Wine Club Insider back.

In the middle of a 80 mile bike/run training day yesterday, we rode the VERY steep trail up to Arbor Crest Winery, high on the bluff overlooking the river, and took a little lunch picnic break.

Arbor Crest  – www.arborcrest.com- has to be one of the most beautiful wineries I have seen outside of Napa, France or Italy. The original Cliff house is a national historic landmark, and can be rented for special events, weddings, etc.

They have beautiful grounds with waterfalls, gazebos and the like, and a new tasting room to feature their wonderful wines, which segues beautifully into my topic of the day…

One of my favorite items in my cellar is a 3L bottle of Arbor Crest’s flagship wine, Dionysus, a Cab Sauv, Merlot, Cab Franc blend that has garnered great reviews, and is one of my top twenty, I would say.

I started collecting large format bottles almost by accident a few years ago when I won one at an auction, and since then, I’ve been hooked.

I now own more than forty, with about sixteen being 3L, 5L and even one prized “Imperial” (6L) of Silver Oak.

Surprisingly, there are even three larger sizes, including a fifteen liter (twenty bottle) “Nebuchadnezzar.”

I also have 3 liters of “Millennium Cuvee” Champagne, a 5 liter Amarone… ah!

There is something about seeing a great large bottle in a cellar, especially when it is still filled with actual wine, and not just being used as decoration!

Besides the decorative value, larger formats also help the wine last much longer. One thing to remember is to store them on their sides to keep the corks moist (except for display, of course! )

Contrary to most “bulk” products, you might find that larger format bottles are not priced proportionate to their equivalent number of bottles – for example, a 3 liter is often more expensive than 4 regular bottles. This is due to the cost and expense of the actual glass – the bottle itself, which are often custom made, and in my mind, well worth it!

I have received a few large format bottles as gifts, and each of them has and is treasured to this day; there’s just something special about them. If you have a chance, bid on one at an auction, on line, or even just go and invest in a bottle that you will remember for years to come.

Cheers,

Wine Club Insider out.

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Wine Club Insider back for another year!

Welcome to 2009, and what better way to start than with a great new find!

4 Seasons WIne Club (www.4seasonswine.com) has a quality wine club, featuring a few unique features.

Every three months (once every season!), you will receive an entire case of wine, either all-white, all-red or mixed for only $129.95, which works out to less than $11/bottle.

A couple of the other cool features are that they allow you to skip a season or two, and pick back up when you’re ready. They also send you out a preview of next season’s shipment when you get your current one, which is not that common.

Another of the cool things is that if you join soon, either for yourself, or as a wine club gift, you’ll receive a very nice sommelier’s cork screw, complete with wooden display case. A $49 value, yours as a gift.

Perhaps the coolest part right now is that if you sign up now, you will get your entire first case for only $69.99, or $6/bottle!

Yup. An entire case for under $70! That’s hard to beat under any circumstances!

www.4seasonswine.comalso features a very good wine shop, where you can shop by varietal (kind of grape), type (red, white, sparkling, etc), country or price.

They have a terrific selection ranging in price from a few dollars to more than a hundred. In the Dessert section, for example, they have several different ages of port, great late harvests, Tokaji Aszu, one of the world’s greatest wines, and even some outstanding German Eiswein.

Under the “Reds” type, you’ll find choices ranging from an everyday drinking merlot, up to futres for the supposedly esquisite 2005 Mouton Rothschild at only $831/bottle… a steal! Now that’s a “Wine of the Month” selection you don’t see everyday!

Interested in a specific country? You can’t go wrong. In the USA section, for example, you can even buy a magnum of Araujo ‘Eisele’ vineyard Cab for a mere $484! Try to find one of those around town!

Again, check out 4 Seasons Wine club… I think you’ll be impressed!

Cheers,

Wine Club Insider out

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Hey, everyone! Wine Club Insider back with you.

Yesterday, we started talking about one of my favorite wines; Port. Now, some folks haven’t had the pleasure, or perhaps have been a bit afraid to give it a try, thinking that it is going to be too sweet/cloying/wierd.

I would like to tell you that despite what preconceptions you might have, port is a real wine. As a matter of fact, when Wine Spectator released their Top Ten Wines of the Decade for the Nineties, no less than three were ports, including numero uno (Smith Woodhouse). www.smithwoodhouse.com

Port, to further our discussion, can be one of the most well constructed, deep, and character filled wines made, and at 18 – 20% alcohol, lasts for years with a little care, even if opened! (check out www.winepreserve.com for their private preserve product). True vintage wines may actually have to be aged a decade or three before they reach their peak.

I have a couple of favorite port sites amongst the hundreds of choices. The first is www.portwine.com, which is a unique kind of club, as it really is a club! You sign up, and it’s basically a fraternity of port enthusiasts, who arrange tastings, trips, tours and education, without actually selling any wine directly. It is very informative, and offers lots of chances to interact with other port lovers.

www.thevintageportsite.com is another great educational site with information about everything port since 1900 basically, including tasting notes, winemakers notes and auction prices for every year since the turn of the LAST century!

www.intowine.com/portvin.html is another cool tool that actually features a chart that tells you about the character of the wines, as well as what to do with them… hold, drink, pour down the sink… almost a must have to enjoy the great ports that you’re going to add to your wine cellar!

Having a great port decanter and port glasses also makes the whole port drinking experience more enjoyable. You should also try a glass with a nice piece of Stilton, and even try some chocolate with a good tawny… try THAT with a Cab!

Until next time,

Wine Club Insider out.

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Wine Club Insider with you again.

For the last couple of days, we’ve been talking about building a wine cellar to keep your wine club collection safe, cool, and happy. Today, we’re going to chat about some of the other “necessities” you need to make your wine cellar complete!

Number one is a good opener. I mean, what kind of fun can you have with your wine club collection if you can’t open your bottles?

I mainly use three different openers, depending on my mood, and the condition of the corks.

Lately, my favorite has been an “automatic” opener from Oster (www.oster.com). Basically, you put it over the bottle, press the button, and it grabs the cork and pulls it out. The best part is that it works on a rechargeable battery.

My second favorite is a CO2 “popper:” You poke the needle through the cork, hit the button, which releases CO2 into the bottle, and out pops the cork. It has a few limits on certain types of cork, but is the most fun, for sure.

The other important opener in my collection is the “Ah So,” which is basically a set of prongs that you wiggle down beside the cork and ah, so, out it comes. You can get almost any cork out with this.

Of course, having a very good Sommelier’s corkscrew is probably recommended, just in case…

The next key is to have a couple of nice glasses to pour your wine club collection into.

Of course, the “gold standard” is Riedel (www.riedel.com), which is often misspelled Reidel, even on so-called “real” websites. I have to say, from my experience, that while there may be some wine glasses almost as good, there aren’t any better. I also enjoy Dansk (which we use for our dinner parties), but my true favorites for everyday sipping are the Riedel “O” glasses; they are perfect for casual-and not so casual- company, and they work great for the hottub!

I’ve already mentioned before about the airator by Air au Vin (www.winebreather.com), and of course having a good crystal decanter or two to decant your vintage wines into is a must, but I think you’ve got the idea.

I’m always willing to help out, so when you’re ready, give me a call, and I’ll come by and help you test it all out with you! Until then,

Cheers!

Wine Club Insider out!

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Wine Club Insider (the blogger formerly known as “WCI!”) here again!

So, you’ve built your new cellar, got your shelves installed, and your ready to open all of the cases of your wine club collection and put them away for years of perfect aging, but before you do, you really need to come up with a system to keep track of what you’ve got, where you got it, how much you paid for it, and where it is.

Trust me.

If you’re planning on collecting more than a couple hundred bottles (which can happen pretty quickly when you belong to a few nice wine clubs, and when people are giving you wine club gifts) this becomes increasingly important for a number of reasons.

The most important reason is because, except for a very few rare vintages, wine doesn’t last forever. As I emntioned earlier, wine is a living, growing thing, and like most living things, it will reach a point where it will pass its prime, and start heading downhill.

Now, personally, I love old wines, but there’s a tendency to “forget” about some of the well-stored bottles of vintage vino in your wine cellar, and next thing you know, your bottle of 1994 Napa nectar is on its way out.

I also like to have a reminder of where and when I got a bottle of wine, or if it was a wine club gift. I also like (and this is really important!) is that it gives you a record for insurance purposes, in case of a fire or other disaster.

My product of choice is actually the wine collection database template available with Microsoft Office Access. Yup. Microsoft.

I downloaded the basic wine club template, and within a 1/2 hour, I was up and going. Okay, by then I did have over 1800 bottles, so it took me three days to input everything, and get it organized, but it was kind of fun playing. I mean, wine is one of the only hobbies where to play with your collection negates its value… hey, while you can drive your vintage car, no one is going to give you $300 for an empty bottle of Opus.

After you’ve got your wine club collection entered in the computer, another good idea is to use neck tags when you put them on the shelf. These are available from several sites. I got mine from www.iwa.com.

Organized? Excellent! Next time we’ll talk a bit about the glasses and other necessities you will need to properly finish out your perfect wine cellar!

Cheers,

Wine Club Insider, out!

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WCI back with you, looking at building that perfect wine cellar to help you store those vintage wines you’ve collected from your wine clubs!

So, we’ve got our temp, humidity and light sorted out, and we’ve picked out the perfect spot in your house; maybe the northwest, tree-shaded corner, or maybe in the addition you built off the kitchen. Now, you’ve got to look at cooling and humidity systems, which are essential, if you don’t have the perfect natural conditions.

Vinotheque (www.vinotheque.com) makes some of the premier units in the world, and there are several good choices on www.wineenthusiasts.com as well.

The key is to get one that is correct for the room size and conditions you have; obviously, if you live in Phoenix, you’ll need a little more juice than if you live in the mountains in northern Idaho.

Next, choose your floors. We chose slate, which we laid ourselves, and we’re very happy with it, though it’s not too forgiving, if a bottle does drop… Other choices include hard wood, tile, or even cork.

With your shelves, choose some that make it easy to get at your wine collection, and that make it safe to take a bottle out. Plain shelves can hold a lot of fine wine, but can cause complications if you want to take out a bottle of vintage wine on the third or fourth layer down, especially with the odd shaped Syrah bottles. Trust me on this.

I would highly recommend having a “wine system” or main, free-standing rack that holds a lot of wine, has room on top for large wine bottles, and end pieces for glasses, and your other wine accessories. My brother-in-law crafted mine by hand as my birthday gift a few years ago, using plans he got from Norm Abrams’ New Yankee workshop (www.newyankee,com).

For the remaining wall space, I used wine racks from www.winerack.com, and the good folks at International Wine Accessories (www.iwa.com) can actually outfit your entire cellar for you, designed as you like it, and I mean anything; they will custom build you ANYTHING you want (and even things you didn’t know you wanted!), built to fit your space.

Now you’ve got your space, and tomorrow, we’ll talk a bit about how to keep track of your burgeoning fine wine collection!

Cheers,

WCI

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WCI back to finish up our Townshend dinner with winemaker Don Townshend. (www.townshendcellar.com).

Now, to jump back a sec, Townshend is a family owned business started in 1979, but Don says he didn’t make his first ‘real” wine until the 1995 vintage, which ended up being an extraordinary year. Since then, they’ve grown into a 10,000 case/year winery, and they make the nationally famous “T3,” a non-vintage Bordeaux blend, and the new “Vortex,” another blend rapidly gaining critical acclaim.

When last we talked…

So far, we’d enjoyed a champagne cocktail, “Relentless DRG,” the new Down River Grill Blend to be released this week (good), a Ste. Chappelle Reisling (very nice), the Townshend ’00 Cabernet Sauvignon (awesome), a St. Supery 2000 Dollarhide Ranch Cab (smooth and tasty), a Townshend 2000 Cab Franc (huge!), a 1997 L’ Ecosse Cab Franc (not bad) and the 1999 Townshend Merlot (amazing).

Dinner wasn’t too bad, if I do say myself. We had lamb chops served over a curry and turmeric rice with golden raisins, accompanied by grilled asparagus and a slice of fried eggplant over sauteed spinach. It held up well to the wines, and was appreciated by all, though it was really a night for the wines to shine. We even brought out the Reidel glasses (www.riedel.com), putting their Cab glass, their Merlot glass and their Port glasses to the test. Somehow, great wines do taste better in great glasses!

Now, dessert…

I love cooking desserts, and one of Don’s passions is making ports and dessert wines.

Dessert was my version of a baked apple, which consists of using a melon baller to partially core a Macintosh apple, and then stuffing it with raisins, brown sugar and cinnamon. The real secret is to then bake them in a bottle of Sauternne for an hour or so. I served them warm with homemade whipped cream, and an 2005 “Neiges,” an apple Ice wine from Quebec that can compete with the grand dessert wines of the world, and which was a perfect accompaniment.

Don had brought a bottle of his Huckleberry Port, which is truly an awesome wine. Made from 100% huckleberry juice, it is an exquisite spirit. and he had found a lone bottle of 1977 Vintage Rebello Balente port, which we poured and took to the hot tub. It was a perfect way to end the evening! Rich, fruity, beautiful color, great legs, and rare. Shared with good friends, it doesn’t get much better!

Townshend also has a great little wine club; The “Diamond T Club,” which sends out four shipments of two bottles per year, and also gives the members a nice 20% discount on every Townshend wine. Check them out!

All in all, it was a great evening… one of those where you have maybe a drop too much, but no one was driving, the hot tub was warm, and all was right with the world.

Cheers,

WCI

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WCI back to regale you with an evening of some of the best reds I’ve had in a long while…

As soon as we finished our salads, Don Townshend of Townshend Cellars (www.townshendcellar.com) started pouring. Nothing like starting with the Big Boys, so we poured Don’s acclaimed ’00 Cabernet Sauvignon, and my first contribution to the evening, a St. Supery 2000 Dollarhide Ranch Cabernet. (www.stsupery.com)

These were some huge wines! The St. Supery was a bit softer but still had a ton of fruit, while the Townshend was huge… a bit more acidic, as is Don’s tendency, but easily worthy of another decade in the bottle. The five of us began our informal, highly subjective judging, and declared it a tie, with a caveat that we would taste again in a half hour or so.

We’d barely finished our first tastes of those when he poured his 2000 Cabernet Franc. It was one of the biggest wines I’ve had in years. It was a giant, and leapt into the running for the evening’s top wines. I love Cab Francs, but have had some disappointing ones as well, so it was a great surprise.

Now, we were using an air breather by “Air au Vin,” (www.airbreather.com) that breathes air into either a bottle or a glass of wine, equalling about an hour of decanting in about 30 seconds. We were able to “taste test” the new wines fresh from the bottle, and then airate them and taste them again; it makes a real difference.

Don then opened a second Cab Franc, this time a  1999 L’ Ecosse from California, that he had bought a case of years ago. On any other evening, it would have been a star, but while tasty, didn’t stack up to the Townshend Cab Franc.

Finally, he opened his 1999 Merlot. This is a Monster wine. As many of you likely remember, after the movie “Sideways,” Merlot sales fell, while Pinot sales climbed, and people kind of went off Merlot. I think it’s kind of ironic, since two of the most acclaimed, expensive and rare wines in the world are Merlots… yup, Chateau Petrus and Le Pin are both Merlots. I think Sideways did wine drinkers disservice, because with a wine like this, people are missing out! It is easily one of the best Merlots I have ever had, and Don said it might be one of his top two or three best wines he’s ever made, along with his Late Harvest Chenin Blanc, and his 95 Reserve Cab… Legacy wines.

I haven’t even got to tell you about dinner yet, so I guess I’ll be back to finish the story tomorrow!

Cheers,

WCI

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