Scrugy: Latest wine posts from Blogs

The Wine Connoisseur : Wine - a Gentleman’s Game: The Adventures of an Amateur Winemaker Turned Professional

The Wine Connoisseur — 04 Jul 2009 03:17:32

Product Description
How one man and his family made their dream of owning a winery come true–and helped revitalize New York’s winemaking industry in the process.

From the Back Cover
In 1957, Mark and Dene Miller purchased a vineyard in Marlboro, New York, overlooking the majestic Hudson River and the distant Berkshires. They really only wanted a few acres of vines, from which they hoped to produce a few cases of wine for themselves and their friends. Yet out of that small dream grew something much more ambitious: the revitalization not only of America’s oldest known vineyard but of the entire Hudson Valley winemaking industry. Told with charm and humor and illustrated with Mark Miller’s own handsome drawings, Wine–A Gentleman’s Game offers a great deal of practical information on grape cultivation and winemaking. Perhaps more importantly, however, their story, and the story of Benmarl Winery, also nurtures the hope lurking in many of us that, with the proper amount of courage and determination, we could do the same.

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Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France ...: Wine News (23)

Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France — 04 Jul 2009 02:38:40

Back from the grazing fieldBack home On goat cheese, wine, garden shoes, crashing birds....and Wal Mart As soon as I came to the Loire, back from my trip in Israel, I rode to the old farm lady who makes goat...

Vino da Burde : Festival delle Passioni, siamo nel vivo!

Vino da Burde — 04 Jul 2009 01:00:44

O meglio, io no visto che alla fine non ce l’ho fatta ad essere della partita ma tra Davide Paolini, Crippa, gelato a km 0 e sorprese continue pare mi sia perso sul serio qualcosa di ganzo!Voi che fate ancora in tempo, oggi stasera Bottura e la fusion con la musica, domenica Marchesi e Alajmo… Meno [...]

1 Wine Dude : Weekly Twitter Wine Mini-Reviews Round-up for 2009-07-04

1 Wine Dude — 04 Jul 2009 01:00:00

07 Siduri Rosella's Vineyards Pinot Noir (Santa Lucia Highlands): Smokey. As in, *real* smokey. Got a brush fire in this glass here! #
06 Goldeneye Pinot Noir (Anderson Valley): Imagine a ripe little strawberry, folded up nice & cozy in a HUGE blanket. A blanket of BOOZE. #
07 Landmark 'Grand Detour' Pinot Noir (Sonoma Coast): Sweet red berry fruit. A bit hot, and not terribly complex, but solid if u like BIG. #
07 Monchhof Urzig Wurzgarten Riesling Kabinett (Mosel): Fresh-cut apples, pear & sugar. Still a baby, but will compliment sushi right now. #
07 Undurraga T.H. Syrah (Limari, Chile): Deep red berry, but can't shake the green pepper. Still, will play very nice with grilled whatever! #
05 Oak Ridge Winery "OZV" Zinfandel (Lodi): An acquired taste. Very sweet blue berry fruit and chocolate, but not quite solidly integrated. #
08 Emiliana 'Natura' Sauvignon Blanc (Casablanca Valley, Chile): White peach, ripe lemon, wet stone, and all good – 'nuff said. #
08 Ruffino Orvieto Classico: Classic indeed. Almost too delicate on the nose, but the mouthfeel will rock lighter shrimp or scallops dishes. #

1 Wine Dude : Weekly Twitter Wine Mini-Reviews Round-up for 2009-07-04

1 Wine Dude — 04 Jul 2009 01:00:00

07 Siduri Rosella's Vineyards Pinot Noir (Santa Lucia Highlands): Smokey. As in, *real* smokey. Got a brush fire in this glass here! #
06 Goldeneye Pinot Noir (Anderson Valley): Imagine a ripe little strawberry, folded up nice & cozy in a HUGE blanket. A blanket of BOOZE. #
07 Landmark 'Grand Detour' Pinot Noir (Sonoma Coast): Sweet red berry fruit. A bit hot, and not terribly complex, but solid if u like BIG. #
07 Monchhof Urzig Wurzgarten Riesling Kabinett (Mosel): Fresh-cut apples, pear & sugar. Still a baby, but will compliment sushi right now. #
07 Undurraga T.H. Syrah (Limari, Chile): Deep red berry, but can't shake the green pepper. Still, will play very nice with grilled whatever! #
05 Oak Ridge Winery "OZV" Zinfandel (Lodi): An acquired taste. Very sweet blue berry fruit and chocolate, but not quite solidly integrated. #
08 Emiliana 'Natura' Sauvignon Blanc (Casablanca Valley, Chile): White peach, ripe lemon, wet stone, and all good – 'nuff said. #
08 Ruffino Orvieto Classico: Classic indeed. Almost too delicate on the nose, but the mouthfeel will rock lighter shrimp or scallops dishes. #

The Wine Front : Kaesler Stonehorse Shiraz 2006

The Wine Front — 04 Jul 2009 00:41:39

Mattinson reviewed it recently here but I thought I’d add my bit anyway, seeing as I’d formatted a review and all… You need a subscription to The Wine Front to see this part of the post

The Wine Front : Kooyong Clonale Chardonnay 2008

The Wine Front — 04 Jul 2009 00:10:33

If ever I’m in a bottle shop (or restaurant) and looking for a good dry white to have with a meal, then Clonale is usually a front runner. You need a subscription to The Wine Front to see this part of the post

WINE IN SWEDEN : TN : Serrata Belguardo 2006, IGT, Marchesi Mazzei, Maremma, Tuscany, Italy

WINE IN SWEDEN — 03 Jul 2009 23:27:00

Marchesi Mazzei have been the proprietors of Castello di Fonterutoli since 1435.

The Belguardo estate is located in the Maremma region of Tuscany, on the hills between Grosseto and Montiano, near the national park “dell'Uccellina”, about ten kilometers from the coast.

This wine is a blend of 80% Sangiovese and 20% Alicante Nero. The grapes were picked from September 12th, for the Sangiovese, and from September 1st, for the Alicante Nero. The wine was fermented at a temperature between 28 and 30 degrees. The wine was aged for approximately twelve months in small, 225 litres, 30% new, French and American oak barrels. The total acidity is 5.70 grammes per litre. All the vines were spur cordon trained. The vine planting density was 6,600 plants per hectare. The wine was bottled in March 2008 and 92,000 bottles were produced.

Colour : Dark red

Aroma : Oak, vanilla, cherries, milk chocolate, spice

Taste : Vanilla and oak bomb, lots of sour cherry fruit, spice, tobacco, smooth tannins on finish

Alcohol : 13.5%

Price : 99 SEK

Mark : C+

Website : Marchesi Mazzei SPA

UKWinesOnline : A WineDrop in the West Country

UKWinesOnline — 03 Jul 2009 23:12:31

WineDrop.co.uk is an independent online wine merchant which offers an extraordinarily wide range of wines, spirits and beers. Their list features wines from all the usual suspects, but also from Greece, Hungary, Romania, Japan, Uruguay and Brazil amongst others.
Brazil is an unusual choice – the Rio Sol Seco Cabernet Sauvignon is “Warm fruit and a little edge. Pleasingly soft palate with modest length of flavour – emminently quaffable but something of a curiosity! It is the only wine in the world produced at 8 degrees South – indeed it used to be said that wine was impossible to produce in the North East of Brazil (São Francisco Valley, Pernambuco Province), as vines grow continuously all year, and each plant completes a growing cycle in only five months – so two vintages in a year are the norm!
(The EU will probably ban this soon – so try a bottle whilst you can!) ”

You are bound to find something different and interesting here, although there is no indication of any tastings to sample any of their offerings before you buy. There are also some West Country ciders and ales on offer.

Our aim is to offer a friendly and prompt wine delivery service for one of the widest range of competitively priced wines on the net, to offer a touch of old fashioned wine merchant service in an on line wine merchant world!
New to Pinot Grigio? or thoroughly bored with it, come to us! Fifty years of professional sniffing-tasting-spit…should have given us just that little bit of extra experience. Getting soft with age, quality comes first for us, value for money follows. Having always been free to do so, we strive to buy as individually as possible. We like the classics of the Old World but we are also responsive to developments in the New – after all in the early 80s we were the first in the UK to import a comprehensive range of Australian wines from Penfold’s – sadly now such a shadow of their former selves.

WineDrop.co.uk, 3 Alphin Centre, Exeter, Devon, EX2 8RG
T: 0139 220 3019 E: orderdrop@winedrop.co.uk

http://www.winedrop.co.uk/contact.asp

Vinography: A Wine Blog : Vinography Images: Highlights

Vinography: A Wine Blog — 03 Jul 2009 22:32:41

Highlights
Vineyards become the most dramatic at the end of the day, when, like mountain ridges, they can be caught by the last light of the sun. I love this image, both for the way the light rakes across the rows of vines, but also for the subtle depth of the landscape in the haze beyond the foreground. The willingness to wait for moments like this separates the average photographer from pros like Andy. -- Alder Yarrow

INSTRUCTIONS:
Download this image by right-clicking on the image and selecting "save link as" or "save target as" and then select the desired location on your computer to save the image. Mac users can also just click the image to open the full size view and drag that to their desktops.

To set the image as your desktop wallpaper, Mac users should follow these instructions, while PC users should follow these.

PRINTS:
If you are interested in owning an archive quality, limited edition print of this image please contact photographer Andy Katz through his web site.

ABOUT VINOGRAPHY IMAGES:
Vinography regularly features images by photographer Andy Katz for readers' personal use as desktop backgrounds or screen savers. We hope you enjoy them. Please respect the copyright on these images.

The Wine Front : Yelland & Papps Greenock Shiraz 2007

The Wine Front — 03 Jul 2009 22:13:05

Love the packaging although, of course, it’s what’s on the inside that counts. You need a subscription to The Wine Front to see this part of the post

Blisstree » Food & Nutrition ...: Roasted Red Chili Flank Steak

Blisstree » Food & Nutrition — 03 Jul 2009 21:10:23

I have a super easy grilling recipe with a kick for your holiday weekend. The roasted red chili’s step this beef recipe up a notch on the heat meter.

During the summer I love recipes where the prep is done ahead of time, then just pull it out at meal time and with minimum effort supper is on the table. With this recipe from Thai Kitchen you can put the steaks in the fridge to marinate early in the day, then just pull them out when it’s time to grill and be ready to eat in less than 30 minutes.

Roasted Red Chili Flank Steak
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Refrigerate: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 16 minutes

Ingredients
2 tablespoons Thai Kitchen® Roasted Red Chili Paste
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon black peppercorns, crushed
1 tablespoon cumin seed, crushed
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 1/2 pounds flank steak

Mix chili paste, oil, peppercorns, cumin seed and sea salt in small bowl. Coat steak evenly on both sides with mixture.

Refrigerate 30 minutes or longer for extra flavor.

Broil or grill steak over medium-high heat 6 to 8 minutes per side or until desired doneness. Let stand 5 minutes before slicing. Cut steak across the grain into thin slices.

Makes 6 servings.

Share and Enjoy:

Post from: Blisstree

Roasted Red Chili Flank Steak

Wineass - One Line Wine ...: 2006 Siempre Caren’s Cuvee

Wineass - One Line Wine Reviews — 03 Jul 2009 20:19:17

It’s Willy Wonka’s purple velvet jacket–smooth, rich, and more than a tad wacky.

Blisstree » Food & Nutrition ...: Pan-Fried Mahi-Mahi Steaks

Blisstree » Food & Nutrition — 03 Jul 2009 18:26:50

I call this pan-fried mahi-mahi dish with wild rice and sauteed spinach a “Before The 4th of July” meal. Meaning, before we binge on hotdogs, burgers, steaks, etc, I decided to cook seafood for tonight’s dinner.

The last time I cooked mahi-mahi, I gave in to my Husband’s request of baking the fish. This time around, I decided to just pan-fry the mahi-mahi steaks. I marinated it in a simple olive oil based marinade first of course.

Pan-Fried Mahi-Mahi (Image © Dexie Wharton)

INGREDIENTS :
2 mahi-mahi steaks
1/4 cup olive oil
juice of 1 wedge of lime
sprinkle of garlic powder
sprinkle of ginger powder
sprinkle of dried parsley
sprinkle of red pepper flakes
salt and pepper
butter for pan-frying

Combine the olive oil, garlic powder, ginger powder, lime juice, dried parsley, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Which everything together. Pour over the mahi-mahi steaks. Coat each sides of the fish. Marinate for 10-15 minutes or so.

Melt butter in non-stick pan. Fry the fish, skin side first. About 8-10 minutes on each sides.

Serve the fish with Uncle Ben’s Wile Rice and sauteed spinach.

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Post from: Blisstree

Pan-Fried Mahi-Mahi Steaks

Wine Scamp : I’m Baaaaaaaaack….

Wine Scamp — 03 Jul 2009 18:25:50

Did you wonder if you’d ever hear from me again? I wondered, too. I kind of thought I wouldn’t be back – that the Scamp was not motherhood-friendly. I’ve been blogging, off and on, at Careening and Gestating, and now at Wigglet McFancyPants. But it was pretty impossible to keep Scamping when I had no taste for wine while pregnant and then insufficient courage to risk wine drinking while feeding a colicky baby nothing but my breastmilk.

Colic? Ugh. Don’t get me started.

I finally started drinking wine again a month or so ago, almost more as medicine than for enjoyment. Returning to the Scamp with little money and less time to taste wine is going to be a challenge, but I hope that you, dearest reader, will suffer through it with me. I imagine that more than a few of the denizens of the Mystical Interwebs find themselves equally challenged, both financially and temporally.

On that note, here are tips for all those New Mother Wineaux out there:

1.) Drink cheap. exersaucers and convertible car seats and diapers and baby pools and rompers and, most of all, DAY CARE, has begun to act as a budget-eating virus on your life. Evidently, this doesn’t end for a long time. Once you start drinking wine again, you’re going to want to do it a lot, so don’t imagine that you’re going to be quaffing Sine Qua Non – or even Shafer – until the little tyrant is at least in high school.

2.) Drink simple. The last thing I want to think hard about after a long day of work, child ferrying, breast pumping, rushing through traffic, scraping leftovers into a semblance of dinner and getting the kid to FINALLY go to sleep… well, the last thing I want to puzzle over is a complex, hard-to-warm-up-to bottle of wine. The pleasures reserved for new parents are simple ones. Use your brain power to eke out more than 10 minutes to yourself every week.

3.) Drink food-friendly. If you’re breastfeeding, you’re probably going to be drinking a glass of wine with dinner. If you’re not breastfeeding, you probably need to multi-task and will be drinking a glass of wine with dinner. And since dinner in my household – I don’t know about yours; maybe you have Chateaubriand every night! – but since dinner in my household is a PBJ about twice a week, I stock my fridge with wine that’s high in acidity and low in tannin. As an example, Viognier + PBJ =

4.) Drink a lot. Ha! Just kidding. I figure that a glass of wine with dinner at night will, at worst, encourage the Wigglet to sleep better that evening. I have not done any research, internet or otherwise, so I am currently Making This Shit Up to the Nth degree. For the record, I hate Pump & Dump. It’s such a pain in the ass to express breast milk that I can NOT just throw it away. I’d rather exercise a little restraint. Especially considering that’s all the exercise I get these days!

I’ll be trying to give you a run-down of some of my favorite wines that fulfill all of the above guidelines. If this can help a wine-deprived soul up to her elbows in poop and spit up, all the better!

Burgundy-Report : 06 lucie & auguste lignier morey st.denis vieilles vignes

Burgundy-Report — 03 Jul 2009 18:16:11

I like the development of the branding here. The shell at the centre of the label, inter-twined with the scripted ‘L’ has remained constant, but the whole design now has more integrity end elegance. There is also a nice working of the capsule with the domaine name on the collar – but enough [...]

06 lucie & auguste lignier morey st.denis vieilles vignes

Women & Wine : Top 10 Reasons for Sarah Palin Resignation

Women & Wine — 03 Jul 2009 16:31:12

The following was written prior to cocktail hour on the west coast.... 1) She thought that MJ was the King of the GOP not the King of POP 2) Test results were about to be released to show that her grandchild TRIP is really the son of TRIP (Sr.) 3) She looked at the window of her house (towards Russia) and realized that she could see it because Global Warming had taken all the snow off the mountains 4) Looking at Russia she realized that she could move there and no one would know who she was 5) While reading all of the magazines and newspapers that she reads she realized there were some stories that made her look really stupid 6) She was told that she will get the job as Governor of South Carolina - it's warmer there 7) She just got a bill from Neiman Marcus saying she owes them $150K 8) She heard she could "double up" on history classes this summer at Wasilla High 9) Alaska is succeeding and Todd is going to be President of Independent Alaska, she will be First Lady of Alaska 10) She got a blank check from Rupert Murdoch to host her own show on Fox News - "Insight with Sarah Palin"

jamie goode's wine blog : Biodynamic-ish Sangiovese from California

jamie goode's wine blog — 03 Jul 2009 16:17:00

A conundrum of a wine. It's from Randall Grahm's Bonny Doon operation. It's mainly from a vineyard farmed biodynamically in San Benito County, yet it contains an ingredients list that most emphatically is not an indicator of typically natural wine making. Yet you have to respect the honesty and integrity that led to that list appearing on the bottle. It reads:

INGREDIENTS: GRAPES, TARTARIC ACID, SULFUR DIOXIDE

IN THE WINEMAKING PROCESS THE FOLLOWING WERE UTILIZED: UNTOASTED WOOD CHIPS, FRENCH OAK BARRELS, CULTURED YEAST, YEAST NUTRIENTS, MALOLACTIC CULTURE, COPPER SULFATE

Then, on the front label, it has a picture of the sensitive crystallization of the wine.

Ca' del Solo Sangiovese 2006 San Benito County, California
Intensely savoury with tarry, spicy notes on the nose as well as dense blackberry and plum fruit. The palate shows rich, ripe dark cherry and plum fruit backed up with savoury, spicy, earthy notes and high acidity that sticks out a little. Dense, savoury and seriously structured, this is a bit rustic, but is one of the best non-Italian expressions of Sangiovese that I've encountered, and is utterly delicious and thoroughly food friendly. 90/100 (the 2005 is £13 at Berry Bros & Rudd)

tales of a sommelier : Thanks!

tales of a sommelier — 03 Jul 2009 15:47:00

Many thanks to anyone who voted for me in the imbibe taste sommelier of the year awards, and thanks to anyone who voted for anyone else too! Im chuffed to bits that I was runner up to Andrea Briccarello from London (Bentleys Oyster Bar?) alongside Joris Beijn from 1901 at Andaz.

tales of a sommelier : Something for the weekend?

tales of a sommelier — 03 Jul 2009 15:35:00

Ive started a new initiative in an effort to move some top-end burgundies. Only available on a friday and saturday night, we have two burgundies on offer at cost price plus vat. Yes we are giving away (virtually giving away) Grand Cru burgundy. (The figure is rounded up to the nearest pound, so quite literaly we are making pennies on some of these wines.)

This week we have a Batard-Montrachet from Blain Gagnard, 1999 at £60 and a Drouhin-Laroze Bonnes Mares 1997 also at £60. I sold two bottles of the latter tonight and I must say that the table got a steal of a deal. The wine had a rich feral character with violets, dark earth and red berries on the nose, with a rich underpinning of medium soft tannins. The length was quite astounding, with a rich warming, almost spicy finish to the wine. What a great value wine at £60 , its normally on the list at over £100.

I also sold three bottles of Drouhin-Laroze Chambertin Clos de Beze 1997 at considerably lower selling price than listed. This was a lot more elegant and refined than the Bonnes Mares, less animalistic, more softer red fruit flavours with less violet aromas and perhaps a touch of rosewater about the finish. The tannins were much softer than the BM as well, lighter on the palate, with quite a long finish, but perhaps a touch drier and cleaner.

So the next few months its open season on Grand Cru burgundy, come along, see what there is and make me an offer. If its sensible then you might just get yourself a great value burgundy with your meal!