Swirling with Sonja

How Cool is...RIPASSO!

2008-12-20T11:04:00.000-08:00

So in the lovely province of Verona, Italy, many wonderful things happen. Star crossed lovers, amazing architecture and Valpolicella! The latter is a DOC, a legally defined region governed by strict winemaking laws.

Valpolicella is a light, fragrant, fruity wine with hints of licorice, cherries and sometimes a touch of a bitter finish (common to Italian wines). It is made from three grapes that you will never remember: Corvina Veronese, Rondinella and Molinara. If you want to take your evening to a whole new level of fantastic, you want an Amarone, the grown up, expensive version of Valpolicella. Right in between falls Ripasso.

To understand Ripasso we must first understand Amarone. The grapes used to make Valpolicella are spread on straw mats and dried in the sunshine while large Italian women stand around and gossip about their husbands. Unlike Sauternes or Tokaji, the goal is to prevent Botrytis cinera (noble rot) and rotting bunches are throw by the wayside. The drying process, called rasinate, concentrates the juice and increases skin contact with the fruit. The resulting wine is big, bold, well balanced, low in acid and deliciously raisiny. It’s also a little pricy.

The poor man’s Amarone is Valpolicella Ripasso. The process is simple: take some Valpolicella (the light, fragrant wine) and re-pass it through the leftover skins, pits, stems, grape mush, lees of the Amarone (called pomace). The wine sits with the pomace for about two weeks and takes on some of the color, tannin and intensity of an Amarone.

And there you have the fantastic trio: Valpolicella, Ripasso and Amarone. Or for the fashionably inclined … work dress, happy hour dress and little black dress.

Cheers!
Sonja

ok I'm back like Chianti

2008-11-27T21:57:00.000-08:00

Seriously, there are some great Chiantis out there. Don't rule them out because you had a bad by the glass experience at your local cheap eatery.

I'm going to attempt to keep this guy up and running. I'm not completely sure why, but there must be some benefit in the end when you stick things out. Anyhoo - I need to get a list of topics going and we'll churn some vino insight OUT!

In the meantime keep drinking whiskey. Its good for you.

Patience. Your wine deserves it.

2008-06-03T12:15:00.000-07:00

People don't like waiting. Not at all. This is why there is next day delivery. We want it all and we want it now.

A study* conducting in Australia indicates that the average time from wine bottle purchase to consumption is 30 minutes. Get that thing home and crack it open. Most wine is actually made to reflect this demand. Your average bottle of wine does not need to be aged and might be worse off for it. This includes a few wines from Napa.

However, wine is a living breathing thing. It changes. From this minute you pop the cork to the last drop it is changing.

Ever notice that your last glass is usually the best?

Most wine does not taste quite right out of the bottle. It is closed up, tight, maybe a bit medicinal or hot. It won't have complex aromas or flavors. Unfortunately, most wine is consumed at the corking point.

I recommend the corking/cooking guideline. Buy your wine. The second you get home, uncork it. Drink 1 beer. Make dinner. Drink wine.

Give your wine a chance to impress you. It has more to offer than its first impression.

* A lot of imformation that I take as fact was given to me by the sommelier instructor from the International Sommelier Guild. So if you need to know the exact study, ask DJ.

I love ROSE and so should you!

2008-05-29T21:52:00.000-07:00

One of the questions on my sommelier exam was: What is the majority of wine consumed in Argentina?

The answer: Rosé.

That was a stupid question.

However, the answer makes you think: Should I be drinking more rosé? Yes. Yes you should.

I know what you're thinking! 'Rosé is sweet and syrupy and a femmy foo foo drink for sissies!' Nonsense! And don't you ever use the phrase 'femmy foo foo' about wine again.

In Argentina and France, the burliest of men can be seen sipping this light hearted refreshment in little glasses. Imagine the rugged farmer blowing smoke out of his nose and pontificating over a cup of pink wine.

Rosé gets its silly pink color because it has had a shortened contact with the skins of the grape. Saignée is the method of bleeding off the wine after having only a short skin soak. The other method for making rosé is to blend wines (red + white = pink) but this is only done with Champagne. Because of the abbreviated skin contact, the color doesn't develop as deeply, and neither do the flavors. Instead of a deep, complex wine, we experience a lighter, fruity version with aromas and flavors of strawberries, peaches, watermelon and other fresh, juicy fruits. The rosé can be made from any red wine grape, but is most often Grenache or Syrah. I love the Crios rosé of Malbec and the Robert Hall of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Different geographical regions will produce different styles. French wines tend to be very dry, light and low in alcohol. California rosés tend to be created in the likeness of a red wine, lengthening the skin contact for denser, richer flavors.

While a rose can be sweet, there are many that are delightfully dry and wonderfully refreshing. Don't do yourself a disservice by not trying one. If you have spent your life resisting rose, go ahead, give it a go.

40,301,927 Argentines can't be wrong.

Sonja Goes to Sonoma!

2008-05-16T12:34:00.000-07:00

I was recently informed that when you find yourself a bit stretched at work, tired, perhaps irritable (not me - this is just a generally speaking) there is this vacation thing that apparently makes all that go away. Being one to try new things, I'll be going on "vacation" the second week of June!

Sonja goes to Sonoma! I'll be focusing on the Russian River Valley, but since I'll be there for about a week I'm sure I can branch out.

I'm very excited, especially since I have been working at WineStyles for 2 years now (in September) and have yet to go wine tasting anywhere outside of Temecula.

SO! This is where the reader participation comes in - where have you been, what are your favorites, where should I avoid?

Wine and Food Pairing

2008-05-13T16:26:00.000-07:00

Wine and food go together. The end.

Ok there's a bit more to it than that, but for the most part you should be drinking what you enjoy. Beyond that there are a few simple suggestions to follow and no reason to panic. The following is a collection of items to consider when food pairing.

1) Body. Most of the time you will pair a wine that is equal to the weight of your food. Example - Buttery chardonnays like buttery foods: creamy soups, buttery lobster, oily fish like salmon or trout. Lighter items like a salad or grilled scallops want a Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc. Sweetness is the same. Either pair a dessert wine with something equally sweet or an item that contrasts (ice wine or port with custards or chocolate; Tokaji with stilton cheese).

2) FISH DOES NOT LIKE RED WINE. There is a chemical clashing that occurs when you do this that will cause a funky metallic/rusty taste in your mouth. Ugh. Don't ruin your meal. There is one exception - Pinot Noir pairs well with the heavier, oily fish and is a classic pairing with salmon. Other than that, don't try it!!

3) It's all about chemistry. High acid wines can either pair with equally acidic dishes (Sauvignon Blanc with a lemon based item, Sangiovese with tomato based) or a nice creamy dish to cut through all the fats and refresh your palate (Thanksgiving gravy = crisp chards, pinot gris, etc; Riesling cuts through the fat in pork).

4) Think regionally! What are common meats, veggies and dishes found in the region? France loves lamb, Spain loves seafood.

Here are a few classic items:

Cabernet Sauvignon and Lamb (actually more classic than the presumed steak pairing, but steak is great too)

Syrah and Lamb

Riesling and Pork

Sauvignon Blanc and goat cheese or lemon or both

Zinfandel and BBQ

Merlot and red meats/sausage

Gewurztraminer and spicy foods

Here are a few great links for wine and food pairing:

Food

WineAnswers.com has a lot of great tips for pairing as well as an interactive pairing menu

Cheese Pairing!

Another interactive pairing board

Food Network Pairing

Kendall Jackson's Chart

How Cool is...Tokaji?

2008-05-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

Wine can be pretty basic and enjoyable, no need to search outside the box. You grab a Cab, pop it and your steak is suddenly 10x better. Over time you learn a few things, how wine is made, where it came from, etc. At some point, the more you learn about wine, the more you appreciate it for the creation process and not only its ability to get you through dinner with the in-laws. That appreciation is why fanatics will pay $1000 for a bottle of wine that tastes like a barnyard.

Some wines are just too phenomenal to not know about. One of these is Tokaji Azu, a hungarian dessert wine, one of the greatest dessert wines in the world.

The wine has only recently begun a revival. The 20th century hasn't been particularly kind to Hungary, and until 1989 when it formed a democratic republic, Tokaji production came to a standstill.

To make the wine, we start with healthy, ripe grapes. There are four varietials used: Furmint (making up about 60% of the mix), Harslevelu, Muscat blanc and oremus (You will never need to remember those). The grapes are left on the vine until they are affected with botrytis cinera - the noble rot that is used to make delicious dessert wines around the world (Sauternes!). The grapes are hand harvested, lightly crushed and separated. The grapes that have been affected by the noble rot are piled up on straw mats to sit and rot. Eventually the shriveled, concentrated, raisinated grapes begin to ooze a sweet, syrupy paste (aszu) that is collected in a special bucket called a puttonyos.

The puttonyos is dumped into a giant barrel called a gonc to mix with a standard base wine made from non rotting grapes. The more puttonyos, the sweeter and more expensive your wine will be. Four puttonyos is about the equivlent of a Sauternes, five is pretty standard and wonderful, six is sinfully wonderful. The next level is called Eszencia - there are no words.

This wonderful process, resulting in an amazing wine was the preferred drink of Louis XIV. Cab may be the king of wines, but Tokaji is the wine for kings!

Please drink Tokaji responsibly, too much pleasure in one bottle can be dangerous. If you want to really live on the wild side, pair with some stilton.

Encinitas Rotary Club Wine Festival

2008-05-05T20:03:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for a good time - and who isn't? The Encinitas Wine Festival is coming up the end of May. If you're broke like me you can spend $75 to get in and $50 goes to the charity of your choice (no, you can't name yourself as a charity, I tried). If you spend $125 or $500, 100% goes to the charity.

All the food, wine and fun you can handle in the Quail Botanical Gardens. I was there for the light show over Christmas - things got a little crazy at the mulled wine booth. These guys know how to party!

http://www.encinitaswinefestival.com/home.html

Zinfandel is Quality Wine and its High Time You Had Some

2008-05-05T19:59:00.001-07:00

If Zinfandel brings to mind little old ladies with big hats, college parties or that box you used to keep in your refrigerator, its time for a re-education. Zinfandel rocks and if haven’t tried it since your last experience with Franzia, you’ve missed the point.

While the Zinfandel grape is used to make a light, pink, sweet as heck wine called White Zinfandel (a rose of Zin), it is made for so much more.

Zinfandel gained ground in California during the Gold Rush of the 1850’s, becoming the most widely planted grape in California by the 1900’s (Take that Cab!). During Prohibition, it was the preferred variety for communal wine as well as home grape juice vinification. Eventually, the grape fell into obscurity until its (unfortunate?) 1970’s revival as a sugary rose. Over time, the public has endorsed the red version of the grape, with sales climbing rapidly over the past decade. Currently 10% of the wine grape acreage in California is dedicated to Zinfandel. That’s enough to make you sit up and notice.

All I’m saying is, give Zinfandel a chance! There is an entire festival in Paso Robles dedicated to this awesome wine - the true, blue bottle that is filled with a medium-bodied, jam laden mouthful of delicious wine. Zinfandel is fun and juicy and gushing with complex flavors of plums, blackberries, blueberries...all the berries! Have it at your next BBQ and put all those misconceptions to rest.

I’m trying to think of a great closer -

If its Zin, pour it in!

The only sin is to run out of Zin!

Zinner’s have more fun.

Remember - you’ll always win with a glass of Zin.

Ok, time to stop.

Anybody have something better? I know I’m not the only Zin fan and those are kind of pathetic.

Wine Misconceptions: Sweet vs. Dry

2008-04-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

Whales are not fish.

The world is not flat.

The Opolo Zinfandel is not sweet.

I’ll be writing several posts about misconceptions in wine. If you have fallen for one of these fallacies, don’t despair. I won’t tell anybody.

Everyone who drinks wine is making some obvious error. There is no reason why you should know otherwise. Have you been taught about wine? Did your mother sit you down and after explaining how to make your bed and all about the birds and the bees move on to Bordeaux?I don't think so. Most wine stores don’t want to correct their customers, and most customers would feel embarrassed or threatened if their wine store corrected them.

That’s why I’m doing it via the internet.

Most Zinfandel is not sweet. Many people come into the store seeking a wine that is either not sweet or mmmm....something a little sweet! I feel conflicted. The root of my difficulty is this:

Sweet and dry refer to the sugar content of a wine. A sweet wine has leftover sugars in it. A dry wine has used up all of the sugar to make the alcohol in the wine.

The customer searching for a dry wine probably enjoys a more austere, tannic wine. Tannins cause that drying sensation in your mouth, like drinking tea.

The customer that wants something...mmmm, a little sweet, wants a fruit forward wine that is packed with strawberry, plum, blackberry, boysenberry, raspberry, blueberry (any berry you can name really) flavors. Doesn’t that sound delicious?

If you’ve ever been to WineStyles, you’ll know that we have a section called Nectar. This is where the sweet wines go. The rest of the wine in the store is dry (excepting a Riesling here or there). Most wines sold today are dry. Except for Yellow Tail*.

If you would like a fruit forward (formerly known as sweet) wine, try some of these:

Zinfandel - this is not the White Zin you see in a box...more on that later. Zinfandel is big and juicy and fun to drink.

Rose! - Rose is not always sweet and not a bad thing. I LOVE ROSE! Gasp, I’m making a t-shirt. Rose is packed with strawberries and watermelon flavors! Look at all those exclamation marks.

Shiraz - The clean style of Shiraz coming out of Australia is big, bold and grapey. This will be a bit more tannic than a simple fruit bomb.

Now if you are more of the dry persuasion, you’re probably looking for:

Cabernet Sauvignon - big, bold, tannic.

Merlot - somewhere in between fruity and tannic.

Bordeaux style blends - a mix of the above two. Great tannic, complex wines.

Now, if you have been using your adjectives right and you truly want a sweet wine, try a Moscato or Brachetto. There are different styles of these wines, but they are light, effervescent and low in alcohol. Great for summer.

So to recap:

Sweet = sugar

Fruity = Zinfandel

Dry = no sugar

Tannic = Cabernet Sauvignon

Another way to think about this concept is that sweet and dry are not flavors. These are not ways to describe the tastes in the wine. They are physical attributes.

After learning all of this, I encourage you to buy an example of each and have a wine tasting. Wait a sec - we’ll put a flight on next week that illustrates this.

Cheers!

*Yellow Tail is purchased primarily by the American market. Americans love sugar. Yellow Tail has a ridiculously high sugar content to meet that taste. Australians do not drink Yellow Tail.

Bottle Budgeting - Local Corkage Fees

2008-04-21T12:04:00.000-07:00

With a tightening economy, dining out is one of the first luxuries to go. However, you don't need to skimp all together. The quickest way to hike up a meal cost is a nice bottle of wine.

Restaurants have a great deal of overhead to cover and have a different standard for marking up wine then in a retail setting. You may find yourself paying $30 for a bottle you saw yesterday for $10. This is simply a part of dining out and often a great way to try new wines not available to retail stores. But sometimes, the wine just doesn't hold up to the cost and you find yourself shorted.

You may be tempted to dust off the pots and pans or even stock your refrigerator, but don't give in! Most restaurants charge a moderate corkage fee for bringing your own bottle. I called local restaurants in Encinitas/Leucadia and found most charge $10 or $15, but there are some deals to be found.

Surprisingly, the best bet for your bottle is Chile's with a corkage fee of only $5!

Other deals include Siamese Basil ($7) and Leucadia Pizzeria ($8).

Tastes has a wine selection sold at retail pricing, then charges a $10 corkage fee for purchased bottles. This is a great way to enjoy wines a chef has selected to pair with the menu, but at a more reasonable price.

If you know of any other great deals on corkage fees, let me know. I'll keep hunting!

$10 Corkage Fees - El Callejon, Trattoria i Trulli, Firefly, Sage

$15 Corkage Fees - Savory Casual Fare (3rd bottle goes up to $35), When in Rome, Vigilucci's

$20 Corkage Fees - Firenze, Tastes ($19 for an outside bottle)

Swirling Away!

2008-04-21T11:33:00.001-07:00

Hello wine friends and thank you for stopping by Swirling with Sonja. I am writing this to share what I learn working in the industry, information about wine and to create a resource for North County Winos! I picked swirling out of the Seeing, Swirling, Sniffing, Sipping, Savoring, Spitting or Swallowing possibilities because it seemed to lend to my personality. I’m a swirly kind of gal. Some options just seemed inappropriate.

So browse around, I have a lot of topics I want to cover and hope you’ll find them informative and useful. Please leave comments about your experiences and any knowledge you would like to share! I hope to make this into a community tool; leave links to websites you enjoy, information about local events and comments about wine.

Back to the swirling - this is the process of moving your glass in a circular motion to create a vortex with the wine. The wine should rise up the sides of the glass; the closer you get to the rim without splooshing over, the more respect you will gain in the wine world, finding yourself invited to dinners with dignitaries to delight them with your talent. I myself have gone over the edge many a time and have since learned to swirl conservatively.

Swirling accomplishes two things.

1) It helps the wine oxidize and evolve. Over a period of swirling, your glass will ‘open up’ and show more complex aromas and flavors.

2) As you swirl, air will travel up the glass and bring the aromas to your nose. It helps you smell the wine.

2b) The third and unmentioned thing is that it makes you look like a wine pro and anyone not swirling will immediately feel ashamed they haven’t been swirling all along. They’ll join right in and probably spill it.

I love watching people swirl their wine. There are several types of enthusiasts.

The distracted swirler - they swirl because they know they should, but because they’re engaged in conversation, the swirl becomes a half-hearted shuffle. Occasionally, a splash will pop out on the table, their purse, their shirt or conversation partner, but the swirler never notices.

The shaker - the circular motion is actually linear. This creates a large wave in the glass and often results in spontaneous artwork on any near surface, including the shaker’s shirt.

The awkward swirler - this person deeply desires to swirl their wine, but the movement is unnatural to them. They arrive somewhere between shaking, bouncing, and a bizarre vertical movement that invariably results in a poorly placed stain.

The amateur - deep, exaggerated swirling to show that they have taken the necessary steps to be a wine pro, however they are quickly revealed as a sham when the content of the glass is now in their lap. This may or may not have been how much of the wine I have tasted ended up in a sales rep’s bag.

The pro - handles the swirl with ease, not too high, but just enough action to get the wine reeling. Invariably an amateur will come over to strike up a conversation and spill on the pro.

At the end of the day, you’re bound to have a few drops lost somewhere. Account for this at parties and grab a few extra bottles. And Wine Away. It gets out everything. Happy swirling!