It's Beginning to Look Alot Like Christmas

Wine Shopping and Champagne

This is a good time of year for wine shopping. Stores are having great sales. I find that the internet is making shopping easier and harder. Easier because you can take your time  and pick out the wine that you want and take advantage of the online sales. Harder because when you go into a store, you are never sure if you have the best price or are missing a special wine advertised online.

This week I have seen billboards that proclaim free shipping at the Wine Library using code Library. I have not seen this offer on their website or in an e-mail. Interesting marketing strategy.

It is time to think about Champagne. We love Champagne and always have a bottle or 2 on New Year's Eve. For many years my tennis friends and I had a Champagne and paella dinner for the holidays. Due to unusual circumstances, we are not playing tennis this year and hence no Champagne party. Boo hoo. Nothing is better than to drink 4 or 5 champagnes side by side to compare their styles. It is amazing the amount of styles. Some are big and bold - Bollinger. Some are lighter and elegant - Perrier Jouet and some are just good stuff.

There is much debate about what is the best Champagne to drink vintage, extra premium or non vintage. The non-vintage is what the winery wants their Champagne to taste like since they have the most control in making  it. Non vintage Champagnes are blends of several vintages. Lettie Teague had a good article on Champagne in this past weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/on_wine.html

I like the non vintage Champagnes and find them to be the best values. Vintage Champagnes can get expensive. Look on the back of the bottle for a disgorged date. This is the date the Champagne was finalized to be sold. Since you do not know how old a non vintage Champagne has been sitting in a store, the disgorged date helps alot. Many Champagnes have this date but some do not. Be wary of bottles without the date.

Champagne is also about marketing. The big names sell most of the Champagne - Moet, Veuve Cliquot, Piper Heidsieck etc. However do not be afraid to experiment with any Champagne that you see. Remember if it says Champagne it must be from the Champagne region of France. The only exceptions are some cheap American wines that have been allowed to use the Champagne name since they have been doing so for a long time.

Also remember that besides style, there can be different grapes in different Champagnes Many are blend of pinot meunier, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. A Blanc de Blanc is 100% Chardonnay and a Blanc de Noir is usually 100% Pinot Noir. Try to keep track of what grapes and styles you like.

Eric Asimov in NY Times also has a good Champagne article. Asimov always has interesting thoughts on wine every Wednesday in the Times.http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/dining/pinot-meunier-unacknowledged-grape-of-champagne.html?_r=0

Recent Wines

2010 Domaine Drouhin Oregon Pinot NoirWillamette Valley VG 2010 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. $30 I bought this at the winery. Medium body, nice bouquet, terroir with good fruit, not a fruit bomb but we love this style. Not a sipping wine as it needs food. Had with rack of lamb. Not sure how it will develop as I have not had many aged Oregon wines. Like the style of DDO.
2010 Domaine Drouhin Oregon Chardonnay Arthur $40 Bought this at the winery. Love this wine. Fruit, balance, bouquet, complexity. I tasted it at the winery at an earlier date and it out shined a Drouhin 2009 Chablis that we drank side by side and I love Chablis. This wine has more fruit and less acid than a Chablis but it is a wonderful wine. The oak is used carefully as only half of the wine has been aged in oak.

NV Angove's Zibibbo South Australia Decent sparkler but too sweet for me. Clean flavor and my friends liked it alot

2010 Bodegas Borsao Garnacha Campo de Borja Tres Picos  $12 This is the expensive Borsao! I should like this wine but it didn't do anything for me. Spicy, some complexity, ok nose but no mouth feel and tasted thin. It is high in alcohol which may account for some of the above. I will definitely try this vintage again as I have had this wine in other vintages many times in the past. 2009 Château La Cardonne  Médoc Red Bordeaux Blend $16 This is an excellent wine, good nose, nice mouth feel; fruit, balance and complexity, should develop nicely, this is a wine for California cab drinkers if they want to branch out. A great bargain. 2009 Ghost Hill Cellars Pinot Noir Bayliss-Bower Vineyard, Yamhill-Carlton Flat, not much nose, lacks fruit, not like other 09 Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs. Random Thoughts My son and I chopped down a Christmas tree this year. It was fun but tough to pick one out.The trees seem so much smaller out in the open. We ended up with a great tree that my wife has done her usual masterful job of decorating. Why are many food gifts for the Holidays just empty calories? I think that we should try to send food gifts that friends or business associates will really appreciate. What would you want to receive. I doubt it is a wicker basket of fruit, mustard, crackers, nuts and vacuum packed fish. I think that wine is a good gift but only if the recipient loves wine and and only if you can pick out bottles that the wine lover will enjoy. You do not need to spend lots of money. Went to Lanskys, a Jewish style deli restaurant on Columbus Avenue around 71st Street in NYC. Bought the pastrami sandwich to take out. Not sure what it was, but it was not edible pastrami. Good pastrami has always been hard to find but it may becoming almost extinct. The problem with many foods is that when it is hard to find a good quality product, people start thinking that the product itself is not worth eating. Try Katz's in lower Manhattan for pastrami and only buy one sandwich for 2 or 3. Have not been there in a while but hopefully the quality is still there. Let me know. My wife makes pierogis for her brothers on Christmas. They are fabulous. Dough, farmers cheese and potatoes. Sauteed in butter. A treat. Just ate at Osteria in Philadelphia.osteriaphilly.com The restaurant is owned by Marc Vetri, who is a chef and has 4 restaurants in Philly. The restaurant is trendy and the food is good although the menu is too precious. Ingredients that no one has heard of are sprinkled throughout. We had a special of roasted vegetables and arugula which was OK. We then had a pizza  lombarda baked egg, bitto cheese, mozzarella and cotechino sausage. The pizza was good but nothing special as dough was not as crispy as I like it. The wine was good. It was a blend of 90% Sangiovese and 10% cabernet Sauvignon. Morellino Di Scansano Poggio Alle Sughere 2009. Apparently the wine is not sidely distributed. It is from a not so famous area of Tuscany. It was soft and fruity but no heavy.  I has doppio ravioli with pear, casatica and walnut pesto, which was very good.  For a main course I had roast suckling pig with roasted potatoes. It was very good but it could have used a side with more pizazz. I also had a side of polenta which was good and creamy. For dessert I had olive oil apple upside down cake with apple raisin composta and caramel gelato.  Enjoyed. The gelato was creamier than most. Overall it was a very good meal and probably the best meal that I have had in Philly. The prices are reasonable also.     Merry Christmas to all and to all ...