Beaujolais Nouveau is a Winner

A lot of fuss is made each year right before Thanksgiving and not just about the dangers of talking politics over turkey. Everyone has an opinion on which wine is the best escort of all the different food and party guests who might grace the table? We have an easy answer: Beaujolais Nouveau!

Bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau
Yes, we enjoyed that year’s Nouveau!

Made from the gamay grape native to Burgundy, gamay wines are known as easy drinking, fresh and fruity and meant to be drunk young. But while some gamays can age a bit, the most famous and notorious is the enfant terrible known as Nouveau. It’s new wine that was just made a month or two before the release.

Originally a local specialty for the working class, Beaujolais Nouveau found a champion in Georges Duboeuf, an ambitious wine seller and negociant who transformed the image and accessibility of a wine not respected outside of its home region. That respect took on several forms that have become legend/folklore/mythology. One of these was the New Beaujolais Run: a race from the Duboeuf winery in Romaneche to the Time of London office on the other side of the Channel.

Reading up on Beaujolais Nouveau

There is a great book on Georges Duboeuf, Beaujolais and the Run called “I’ll Drink to That” by Rudolph Chelminski that recounts the race from France to London among many other well-told tidbits of wine lore. It’s a great read and would make a great episode of a racing competition program. It would go nicely with a glass of purple gamay after dinner in a quiet chair away from the clamor of the debate over who-knows-what that started between the green beans amandine and dessert.

Another great bottle we had

The Beaujolais Nouveau has fruit to handle the sweetness of yams, the soft acids to balance the fats of butter and cream, the ability to tame cranberries and bitter greens in salads and refreshing enough to lift the driest turkey breast after all the dark meat was gone. The French peasants of the Beaujolais region knew a winner when they made it, and thanks to Georges that the rest of us can enjoy it as well.

Wine for Your Big Holiday Dinner

This post was originally about picking a wine for Thanksgiving Dinner, but then we realized, not everyone wants to celebrate Thanksgiving. Some folks would prefer to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day. And there are other big holidays coming up during this time of year, many of which involve special foods and cooking turkeys. So why not look at picking a wine for a Big Holiday Dinner? So, we are.

Wait. Isn’t this the middle of October? Uh, yeah. So why worry about what wines to serve for a Big Holiday Dinner now? Well, we’re offering an easy way to figure that out. Catch is, it takes some time to make happen. Besides, you don’t want to be drinking three to four bottles in one night, do you? Yeah. Didn’t think so.

All you need to pick the perfect wine for your Thanksgiving Dinner.
All you need to pick the perfect wine for your Thanksgiving Dinner.

If you’ve never made a Big Holiday Dinner before, you can check out Anne’s series of blogs on the process, starting here. If you’ve simply been asked to bring the wine, then you can also use this post.

Now, the trick with wine for holiday fare is that not all of the traditional foods are all that wine-friendly. Sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, anything sweet, can make even the best cabernet sauvignon taste sour and icky. Think sipping orange juice after a big syrupy bite of pancakes. Blech. And wine experts will recommend all kinds of different wines. Some love pinot noir with turkey, others insist on a robust syrah, still others prefer merlot. Almost any of those will do quite nicely with a turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy. With the sweeter elements of a meal? Not so much.

Fail-safe wine

Our two fail-safe holiday wines are dry sparkling wines (including Champagne, Cavas and California sparkling) and Beaujolais Nouveau. The Nouveau is the first wine released in France and it always comes out the Thursday before Thanksgiving. Since it’s literally new wine, from this year’s harvest, it’s light and fruity, which does well with some of the sweeter parts of the meal. Plus it’s not so in-your-face heavy. That’s great for those of your guests who are new to wine, or even red wines. Bubblies are wonderful because they are already associated with celebrations, and dry bubblies go with just about everything on the planet.

So your options are boundless. And so are all the variations on a theme on the shelf at your local wine store. It’s a bit overwhelming, but fear not. You’re not going in blind and hoping the wine will work. You’re going to buy a sample bottle or four and taste them before you buy however many you need to serve your guests. And you will know how many bottles that is because each bottle has about four to five glasses of wine inside, bubblies have five to six glasses of wine.

Note, we will taste even our standard Nouveau because not every year is that good. It’s not as big a deal because there are usually only two or three brands available. Also, while whites are nice to serve with salads and soup, you’ll probably want a red to go with the stronger flavors of the main event.

The Big Holiday Dinner test tasting

For your test tasting, you’ll need three to four bottles of potential wine. You’ll also need samples of some of the different foods you’re going to be eating. For example, if you’re celebrating Thanksgiving, you might want some turkey potpies, a couple sweet potatoes and some cranberry sauce. If you’re making a brisket for Channukah, then some beef stew, some potato and onion cooked together, and whatever dessert you’re serving. Finally, you’ll need a note pad and pen or pencil.

Cook or reheat your food samples, open up one of your bottles, pour a splash and taste it while eating the pot pie and the potato. Check the nose or aroma, look at the color, but most important of all, does it taste good with the food? Write down why you think it tastes good or why it doesn’t. Is it really sour with the sweet potato? Does it taste harsh on the back of the throat even after a good mouthful of beef stew? Does it taste even smoother and more delicious with the turkey?

Then repeat the process with the other bottles. You may want to do one a night, and have someone help you finish the bottle. Or you can try sealing the bottle and putting it in the fridge and finish it some other evening. If it’s a white, just seal it and pop it in the fridge. Just don’t serve it with Thanksgiving Dinner. Red wines tend to oxidize after they’ve been opened and bubblies lose their bubbles. And whites will sometimes go off.

Once you’ve got your notes, you may have a clear winner. You may not. But that’s not such a bad thing, especially if by the time you get back to the store, your preferred wine is gone. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it does happen sometimes.

No go and taste and let us know what you’re tasting. We can always use a new idea.

Native Ferments with Marlen Porter, Amplify Wines

Native ferments are getting to be a more popular style of winemaking these days, but they can also be a little controversial. Especially in our household. Anne loves them. Michael enjoys well-made native ferments (although not “natural wines” which is a grab bag of marketing hooey).

Marlen Porter, of Amplify Wines, on native ferments
Marlen Porter

So, when we got a chance to talk to Marlen Porter of Amplify Wines, we asked her about them. Porter and her husband and fellow winemaker, Cameron, named their winery after their love of music.

“We basically make all native wines from organic vineyards,” Porter said. “Sourced from Santa Ynez Valley, Santa Maria and now San Benito County. And so our idea is, we are inspired by music and want to create wines that are amplified through native fermentation.”

As Porter pointed out, native ferments are wines that have not been inoculated with human-produced yeasts to ferment the grape juice that becomes wine to dryness.

“Native fermentation is used with the yeast and the flora that lives… comes from the vineyard or the winery.” Porter said. “So it’s basically something that starts itself.”

Native ferments make each wine different

Wines made with native ferments by Amplify Wines and Marlen Porter
Amplify Wines

If you see native fermentation on the label of a bottle, Porter said that you can expect a very unique wine.

“Well, with native fermentations, you have a lot more of a unique style, unique representation of that wine because you’re not manipulating it in any way.” Porter said. “You’re not choosing something from a grade of yeast that’s gonna say, I want this to taste like apple. So… it’s coming from the grape. But then, again, natural fermentation is nothing new. They’ve done native ferments in the old world for years, and that’s basically how wine started. It made itself.”

Porter mentioned that native ferments have gotten to be more of a modern style of winemaking, even though it really isn’t.

“People have been making wine like that for hundreds of thousands of years,” she said. “So for us, it gives us an ability to be a little bit more creative with the ferment, a little bit more creative with what we make, because it really depends on the vintage, the weather, the soil and you really get to taste that in native fermentations versus using commercial yeast.”

Okay, wine has only been around for ten-thousand years, but you get the idea. However, cultured yeasts have only been around for the past hundred years or so, so not very long at all.

One other point regarding native ferments, Michael has tried to make to make several. However, two of the three most common yeast strains create vinegar and we clearly have those strains in the air of our garage winery.

Why Wine Ages in Oak Barrels

Some time ago, we got invited to a lunch and wine tasting featuring wines from Rioja, Spain. The lunch not only featured some amazing wines, the winemaker attended. He led us through a flight of the same red wine aged in different types of oak barrels.

Now, normally, Anne scoffs at tastings like this. Tasting wine based on what oak it was aged in is the sort of thing that wine snobs turn into exercises in precious without breathing hard. And they suck all the joy out of it in the process, too.

The other reason Anne scoffs is that the potential for groupthink in these situations is so high that whatever results you get are darned near pointless. What is groupthink? It’s what happens when people are in a group and someone says A, someone else agrees and the next thing you know, everyone goes along with it, us being the social critters that we are.

It’s how Riedel sells their variety-specific glasses. We don’t doubt their reps honestly believe that a type of wine actually tastes better in a specific glass. But we’ll bet they won’t let you do a tasting blind and/or by yourself, which we did. The wine works better in a specific glass because they keep telling you it will, and someone agrees and next thing you know, the whole room says the same.

But what made this Rioja tasting different is that the winemaker didn’t try to sell us on any one wine. He was merely trying to explain why he used different types of oak barrels to age his wine in.

Stainless steel versus oak

Once upon a time, all wine aged in oak barrels. Or wood barrels, but since oakwood, specifically, was good for making barrels, that’s what folks used. And with steel being insanely expensive and difficult to manipulate, it was put to better use as swords and other stuff. Even after the Industrial Revolution made big-ass metal containers easier to make and cheaper to sell, oak kind of hung on in the winery. Old habits die hard and using big-ass metal containers didn’t have any clear benefit. At least, not right away. That the wine picked up flavors from the wood, well, that was part of the flavor of wine.

Eventually, however, winemakers realized they could make white wines, in particular, taste really good without all that woody flavor. So, stainless steel tanks started showing up in wineries. But the stainless steel didn’t do so much for the reds, and they continue to age red wine in oak barrels.

What oak barrels do

Oak barrels add a certain creaminess (lactic acid) to wine. In addition, because they are not completely air tight, a tiny bit of the wine evaporates. The wine left inside gets left with more intense flavor.

The interesting thing about oak is that because it’s a plant, it’s affected by the same things that grape vines are. So oak from different places in the world adds slightly different flavors to the wine that’s aged in it.

It’s not a huge difference. It’s pretty subtle, in fact. You’re not going to taste a wine blind and know that it was aged in Hungarian rather than French oak. That’s the precious nonsense that makes Anne so crazy. But if you taste a wine that was aged in American barrels side by side with the same wine aged in French and/or Hungarian barrels, you can taste a slight difference. That’s kind of fun.

Picking Wine for the Wine Snob

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One of the biggest problems with all the elitism and snobbery surrounding the world of wine is that it makes the simple gesture of bringing a gift of wine to dinner so fraught with terror. Or otherwise offering a gift. And it’s so very unfair and unnecessary.

Wine geeks that we are, we have gotten our fair share of kindly-meant white zinfandel (and if you’re not a wine person and don’t know why this is not a good thing to do, relax, you’ve hit the right page). Yet we have not mocked anyone who has ever done so, nor have we cut said people off or thought less of them. But then, we try to be nice and accept the gift as an attempt to respect who we are.

At the same time, we recognize that there might be a boss, a future in-law, or just somebody you would like to know better and you’d like to please and/or impress said person and you know this person likes wine. And the sad truth is, this person may also be a wine snob.

The problem is, there are wines that are pretty “safe,” in that almost anybody who likes wine will be reasonably impressed with a bottle of, say, a cabernet sauvignon from Silver Oak winery. But you’re talking about wine that can get pretty pricey. And, truth be told, there are those who think Silver Oak is trading on its label, so you’re still not safe, as it were.

So the first thing to do, if you’re not a wine drinker or know much about wines, is give up on the notion that you’re going to be able to convince a real wine snob that you “know” wines. Because no one knows wine like a wine snob does, unless that person happens to agree with said snob often enough. And that includes people like us who make wine and know what “fine” wine tastes like. That’s what a snob is and why we generally don’t cater to such people. We get that said snob may have a son you’re planning on marrying or may be the manager you’re hoping will promote you. We’re just pointing out that you’re not likely to get on said snob’s good side by trying to impress this person with knowledge that you don’t have (and you can’t have it because the only knowledge this person counts as valid is his or her own).

That doesn’t mean you can’t give this person a gift of wine that shows some thought and care in the giving. After all, it’s the thought that counts, and while you don’t want to send the message that you weren’t thinking, the vast majority of people out there, including wine snobs, are willing to accept that you made an effort on their behalf. As long as it’s clear that you made the effort. Again, we recognize that there are some people willing to attribute the worst motives to you no matter what you do, and at that point, you may want to start looking for another job or settle in for a rocky relationship with the in-laws or re-think the potential relationship. But the following tips should help you with the vast majority of folks.

So when you don’t have the knowledge, sometimes the easiest thing to do is ask. If you really, really want to keep it a surprise, you can try framing the question as a request for another friend who likes wine. But simply saying you don’t really know that much about wine and want to learn will generally warm the cockles of even the grinchiest of hearts because there are few things wine snobs love to do more than pontificate about their preferences. You might try asking where a good place to get wine is or what’s a good wine for someone who’s really into wine.

Now, if said snob responds with several different preferred wine shops and asks about budget, or asks what your friend likes, then you’re probably not dealing with a true wine snob. Which means you can go to yet another wine store and ask the person behind the counter to guide you to a good bottle of something unusual. If said snob says things, “Well, the only place to go is…” or “Obviously, your friend will only want….” then you are, in fact, dealing with a snob, and it might be time to check out that tie or purse.

You can also respond with the “Gee, I’m not sure what my friend likes. What do you like?” Listen carefully, because your target snob will give you plenty to go on. As soon as you feasibly can, write down anything you remember. Then you’ve got two options. If your budget is wide open, then you can go to said snob’s preferred store and ask the salesperson to help you. Most are pretty cool and get it. Sometimes you’ll run into a fellow snob, but then you can walk and shop elsewhere.

Any decent wine store will have someone willing to help a newbie purchase a bottle for someone else. And the good ones won’t make the noob feel like an idiot. Because you’re not an idiot. You’re trying to please someone with a bottle of wine and it really shouldn’t be this complicated. And it shouldn’t break the bank, either, because there are lots and lots of great wines for under $20 and several under $10. If you get a really obscure label from a truly tiny producer, you can also proclaim it a boutique wine, which might forestall some lip curling.

Now, you’ll note we’re not recommending any specific wines here. Why? Because there are far, far too many to list and every time we read one of these lists, we find we have a heck of a time finding a given label – which doesn’t help when you’re looking at the rows and rows of bottles without a clue what to buy.

So worst-case scenario? You don’t know what the target snob likes, just that he or she likes wine. Go with a Bordeaux red, if the person tends toward stuffiness. Go with a premium California cab sauv if the person loves labels and status, Go with a red made from something unusual, such as negrette or tempranillo, if your giftee likes taking chances and adventure. And, again, try and ask your friendly wine store employee for suggestions. They can offer you ideas even we haven’t thought of.

The only hard and fast rule (unless you know for a fact otherwise) is never, never buy white zinfandel for a wine snob. As a wine, it tends to be just dreadful, sick sweet stuff, which is why we don’t like it. There may be good ones out there and you might even like it, which is cool. But most people who like wine don’t tend to like white zin.

Oh, and for the record, there’s a reason we’re the OddBallGrape. We love trying stuff we’ve never heard of.

Méthode Champenoise Redux for a Bubbly Valentine’s Day

Champagne, bubbly, sparkling wine, Valentines Day
Lovely sparkling wines made by the méthode champenoise

This is a redux from a post we ran four years ago on méthode champenoise and why you want to look for it on the label of your Valentine’s Day bubbly. And since Valentine’s is (gasp) next week, we thought we’d share it again.

We tasted Breathless Sparkling Wines a couple years ago at the Family Winemakers tasting event and loved them. Turns out there was a good reason why – they’re made by a friend of ours, Penny Gadd-Coster. Penny’s the Executive Director of Winemaking at Rack & Riddle, a winery and custom crush facility in Hopland, California. (A custom crush facility is a place where people with grapes can go to make wine commercially without buying and/or building a whole winery.)

Breathless is owned by Rebecca Faust, co-owner of Rack & Riddle, and her two sisters Sharon Cohn and Cynthia Faust.

So when we wanted to find out how to pick a good bubbly for Valentine’s Day, it only made sense to talk to Penny about Breathless, and other sparklers.

What are the different sparkling wines?

Sparkling wine, of course, is the generic term for wine that has bubbles in it – or intentionally made with bubbles in it. You can sometimes get bubbles in wine that’s not supposed to have them, but that’s a different issue. Champagne is the stuff from the Champagne region of France and you really shouldn’t call wine Champagne unless it’s actually from there. Never mind that darned near everybody does, including us.

champagne, bubbly, Valentine's Day
Penny Coster in the vineyard. She mostly works on Methode Champenoise

Penny explained that there are some differences between Champagne and California sparklers.

“Probably from a California or a Western U.S. standpoint, the difference is fruit,” she said. “You don’t get that out of most French Champagnes, so that makes them a little bit unique. We can ripen the grapes a little bit more and bring out those flavors.”

Like most French wines, Champagne has a little more acid and will often taste a little chalky, unlike sparkling wines from California.

“You compare these to a French Champagne and they’re a lot more fruit forward,” Penny said. “They can have the acidity, but you actually know that there’s chardonnay in there, that there’s pinot noir in there.”

Oh, yeah, French Champagne and most California sparkling wine are made from either chardonnay – called blanc de blanc, or white from white (grapes), or pinot noir – called blanc de noir, or white from black (or red grapes). All grape juice is white, red and pink wines get their color from soaking the juice in the skins before fermenting them.

Look for Méthode champenoise

For that special night out, if you’re not getting an actual Champagne, Penny recommends looking for the words “méthode champenoise” on the label. This means it was made like they make Champagne in Champagne, France. The wine is fermented and bottled, then goes through a second fermentation in the bottle, which produces the bubbles. Other bubblies are made by the charmat process, which means they shot the fermented wine through with carbon dioxide, basically, like they do with sodas.

“The made in the bottle wine is going to be a lot more elegant,” Penny said. “You’re going to have nicer, smaller bubbles. You’re going to feel more elegant.”

She did point out that méthode champenoise tends to be more expensive because it’s a lot more labor intensive. Nor are charmat-style bubblies that bad. They can be perfectly nice. But we are talking special occasion here.

As for what to serve with your bubbly, well, anything your fuzzy little heart desires. That’s the great thing about sparkling wine, it literally goes with just about everything. Penny suggested having a sparkling rosé if you’re serving a heavy meat dinner, such as a standing rib or steak. If you’re doing something a little on the spicy side, then you might want the slightly sweet bubbly labeled “extra dry.” No, it doesn’t make sense, but that’s how it goes sometimes.

In any case, bubbles make it special and that’s what you want for Valentine’s Day – or any other special occasion. Even if it’s just surviving another week.

Sustainable Wine with Sandra Taylor

Author and consultant Sandra Taylor on sustainable wine

The business side of wine is not usually that interesting to consumers. But talking to consultant and author Sandra Taylor, whose latest book is The Business of Sustainable Wine, was a complete blast. We drifted a bit off target, dissed producers who put girly labels on wines to try to sell them to women, talked about climate change in France and Europe, talked about the Wine MBA from the Bordeaux School of Management in France (yeah, it’s for real, and Taylor holds one).

“The industry is doing a really lousy job marketing to women,” Taylor said, adding that women buy more wine than men. Then (very cleverly getting us back on track) she pointed out that women tend to be more sustainably-minded. “They want to know it’s a sustainable wine.”

She spent 22 years working as an executive for Kodak and Starbucks, then became a consultant, specializing in helping wine brands be more sustainable, which means using agricultural practices that are kinder to the planet, conserving resources such as water, behaving in a socially responsible way to their workers.

What is sustainable wine?

Taylor did point out that organic wine, biodynamic wine and natural wine all fall under the heading of sustainable wine. Growing grapes organically or using biodynamic traditions, as well as making natural wine (or wine that happens naturally without the addition of commercial yeast or other cultures) are all practices that are considered sustainable. But sustainable practices can include spraying some non-organic pesticides or other chemicals to protect a grape crop, for example. And there is also the social justice aspect of treating your workers well which is part of sustainability. You can grow perfectly organic grapes, but would not be considered sustainable if you treat your workers badly.

Part of the trend, Taylor says, is that climate change is having a negative effect on a lot of wine growing regions. But a lot of it is that the demand for sustainable wine is growing. Some of it, she explained, happened because the retailers were getting worried.

“Basically, retailers don’t want to be embarrassed,” she said. “They’ve had enough bad experiences.”

But also, the growers and producers, themselves, are seeing the benefits of the practices.

“They are convinced that it’s the right thing to do,” Taylor said. “The energy and the waters costs are lower. My costs can go down. It’s better for the health of my workers.”

Consumers want it

The trick is finding a way to let consumers know that this is a good thing when they see “sustainable” on a label. Taylor says that a lot of millennials are already asking for it, whereas some very high-end wines are made sustainably and don’t have it on the label.

She thinks it’s a bigger draw now than it might be in the future when it becomes more common. South Africa, New Zealand, Italy and even France are starting to be more sustainable. Wineries in California and Oregon are getting more involved, and in the Paso Robles area, the industry has made a major effort to get their wineries and vineyards practicing sustainability.

“They’ve done a really good job,” Taylor said about Paso Robles. “Their goal is to get as many wineries as they can under the tent.”

A lot of this is really insider stuff, but the bottom line is, the industry is going to respond to demand. And if consumers demand sustainable wine, that is, buy it, ask for it and tell their friends about it, then winemakers and growers are going to adopt sustainable practices.

“It’s the consumer who has the most power,” Taylor said.

Lori Reynolds, of Sonoita Vineyards, and the Mission Grape

Lori Reynolds, of Sonoita Vineyards

The trip to Arizona was supposed to be about vacation, time spent relaxing, visiting Michael’s family. So when we went to check out the state’s three main wine regions it was supposed to be for the fun of it.

So, naturally, we stumbled onto Sonoita Vineyards. It was the first winery in Arizona after Prohibition. They make a wine with one of the most unusual grapes out there, the Mission grape. And the winemaker is a woman.

Well, it took a while, but Anne finally connected with Lori Reynolds, the winemaker, who told us how Sonoita Vineyards was started by her grandfather, Dr. Gordon Duff.

“We had a thriving table grape industry here in the sixties and seventies,” Reynolds said.

However, she explained, competition from the California table grape industry was undercutting the Arizona grapes. So the governor went to the University of Arizona and met with a team there that included her grandfather, Dr. Gordon Dutt, a soil specialist who had been working with the table grape farmers.

“My grandfather said that if table grapes will grow in Arizona, then wine grapes will,” Reynolds said.

The winery was started in 1974 and opened in 1983. Reynolds came on as winemaker after she got her bachelor of science, then realized that she wasn’t as interested in becoming a veterinarian as she’d thought.

“I was having a hard time finding something to do,” she said.

But her grandfather insisted that she was born to make wine, so she studied winemaking through the U.C. Davis Extension, became the assistant winemaker, and in 2013, finally took over the job on her own. She works with her husband, Robi Reynolds, who took over as vineyard manager around the same time after an injury interrupted his plumbing career.

The vineyard grows grapes on 40 acres of the 60 acres they have, Lori Reynolds said. But the most interesting grape they have is a little-known variety that used to be widely planted across the Southwest – the Mission grape.

According to the experts we know, the Mission grape is a hybrid of a grape brought from Spain by Franciscan missionaries in the Eighteenth Century. And, actually, they were growing it in Arizona before it came to California.

We have an unusual connection to the grape via Deborah Hall and Michael’s project with the old vines in downtown Los Angeles. So to taste some of Reynolds’ wine was a treat, indeed. And it was quite tasty.

Reynolds doesn’t ferment her Mission wine to full dryness. Instead of letting the yeast eat up all the grapes’ sugar to make alcohol, she stops the fermentation leaving what’s called residual sugar behind.

“It’s very bitter and astringent without the residual sugar,” Reynolds said.

It can be a bit of a trick to get folks to try the wine until Reynolds explains what to expect.

“I always let [customers] know it’s not dry,” she said. “I also let them It’s not very deep in color. It’s always a ruby red. I let them know that it’s a lower acid, it’s got the sweetness and it depends on the vintage. The 2016, it smells a little like chili pepper. And my ’15 is very clove and cherry with some cranberry.”

 

Leslie Sisneros on Murderously Good Pinot Noir

Leslie Sisneros of Murder Ridge Winery

We met Leslie Sisneros at the 2016 Family Winemakers of California Grand Tasting (in the interests of full disclosure, we got into this paid event for free in the hopes that we’d get around to writing something about it or the presenting winemakers sooner than we did). This is a great event, by the way, especially if you’re new to wine. The $75 for the ticket might seem like a lot, but we’ve seen smaller tastings that cost a lot more, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a greater breadth of wines. Plus, you’ve already paid for them all, so you might as well try even the ones you don’t think you like.

But back to Ms. Sisneros, of Murder Ridge Winery. She’s been making wine for over 20 years, but actually fell into making pinot noir.

“It wasn’t my choice,” she explained. “Because I started out at Kendall Jackson and I was assigned the variety. Actually, zin’s pretty hard, too. I guess it’s good when you start out with the hardest wine to make. But I’m always up for a challenge, so I just took it in stride.”

Pinot noir is a notoriously finicky grape and can be very hard to make well.

“There’s all kinds of different pinots,” Sisneros said. “It can go from the lowest priced ones to the premium ones. You’re looking for something that’s fruity and not overly tannic.”

But when you hear people wax eloquent about pinot noir, you’ll often hear them going on about the clone of the grape.

“There’s more people who talk about pinot in terms of clones than any other variety,” Sisneros said. Many grape varieties have their own specific clones, but it’s more of an issue with pinot noir. “It really does make a difference in what clones you plant and where you plant them. It determines the winemaker’s fingerprint.”

She explained that cloning is sort of like taking the natural process of evolution the next few steps further.

“In nature, everything generally mutates so the strongest survive,” Sisneros said. “What the people do is they’ll select a particular plant or several plants in a vineyard. They’ll take a bud culture and they will keep making it genetically the same and it will take generations and generations.”

She said that after individual clone, the other thing that really makes a difference in a pinot noir is where it’s grown.

“You can certainly tell a Russian River pinot noir,” she said. “To me, they’re like night and day. Mendocino pinot is more delicate. Russian River is dark and moody.”

Murder Ridge Winery is in Mendocino County, in a largely wilderness area known as Mendocino Ridge. The winery gets its name from the infamous murder of Joseph Cooper in 1911. Sisneros partnered with wine grower Steve Alden to form the label after having worked with his grapes for several other wineries for whom she’s worked as a consulting winemaker.

 

How to Choose Your Wine for Thanksgiving

wine for ThanksgivingThis is the time of year when all the wine pundits are falling all over themselves writing about the best wine for Thanksgiving dinner. And everyone writes about a different wine. And at least one or more of those choices you look at and wonder what planet is that writer from?

No need to stress out on this one. You can pick out your own wine for Thanksgiving. Seriously. It’s easy.

You do a blind tasting. Now this is something you want to do with friends because it involves multiple open bottles of wine. But that will also make it a lot more fun.

Choosing wine for Thanksgiving Dinner is actually kind of tough because several of the traditional elements are sweet and do not go well with dry wines, whereas the savory elements are often overwhelmed by sweet wines. And just to confuse things, while turkey is technically at least part white meat, its stronger flavor tends to do better with dry reds.

There are a few exceptions. Sparkling wines go with pretty much everything. Some really fruity dry reds, such as syrahs or zinfandels, do okay with the sweeter foods as well as the savory. Anne doesn’t agree – her palate is more sensitive to the sour of acids, and to her, that’s how anything dry tastes after anything sweet.

Now since dinner is what this is all about, you will need some food to go with your tasting. We recommend turkey pot pie, something cranberry, and baked sweet potato. Pretty much everything you’re going to be eating that day is combined in those three elements.

Next, you need a few wines to try. Check in with your favorite wine merchant or see what the local Trader Joe’s is recommending. Pick up, say, three different bottles. Or have your other friends each bring one. Or get the same number of different whites and different reds, if you want to get that fancy. Because a lone white in a tasting of reds kind of gives itself away.

Doing the blind tasting

Once you’ve got your food elements ready, open the wine bottles, unless they’re white wines. Red wines usually need a touch of air to taste their best. Now, here’s the fun part. Have one person put each bottle into a different paper bag. Have another person shuffle the bottles around and number the bags. That way, no one really knows what’s in each bag.

If you have them, get out enough glasses so that each person has one glass for each wine. So, if you’ve got three wines, each person gets three glasses. But don’t stress. If you don’t have that many glasses, you don’t. Just rinse between tastes.

Then eat the food and taste the wines along with it. Make notes about what you like and don’t like.

That’s it. Simple. Then you serve the wine you liked best and to heck with what the pundit said you should be drinking. Pundits can only offer suggestions. You and your family are the only palates that count in this one.