New wines; Holiday Wine Deals, Del Posto

New wines

Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau 2017 - Good wine, fruity with that Gamay grape twang, light and enjoyable, no need to apologize for drinking it, $7.99 at Costco. Drink a bottle or 2 and forget about it after 1/1. Keep an eye on 2017 regular Beaujolais based upon the Nouveau.

2014 and 2015 Bordeaux's, which are good vintages, are everywhere. Excellent values for under $25. If a wine has a decent rating from Vinous, Wine Advocate, or the Wine Spectator, try it. I would not use ratings from other publications. All Bordeaux's are blends and the main grapes are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petite Verdot. Many of the wines now tell you the grape content on the back label.  The Merlot predominate wines are fragrant and velvety. The Cabernet Sauvignon predominate wines are more tannic and focused.

I am just beginning to try these vintages.Costco has a few. The Wine Library, Total Wine and Gary's in NJ also have some to try. Here are a few currently available and all have good ratings. I have not tried these wines.

Château Lilian Ladouys - St.-Estèphe 2014 (750ml) $22
Château Le Thil Comte Clary - Pessac-Léognan 2014 (750ml) $24

2014 Chateau Noaillac  $13
2015 Chateau Les Grands Chenes $20  

2015 Chateau L'argenteyre  $13


Holiday wine gift ideas

A number of wineries run holiday specials that include free shipping. This makes a huge difference to me as shipping can be as much as $8 per bottle. Shipping to your home can be problematic as each state has different laws and each winery interprets them differently. However here are 3 winery deals that include free shipping and that ship to many states. These wineries are also some of my favs./

Domaine Drouhin Oregon http://store.domainedrouhin.com/Events_and_Special_Offers

Tablas Creek  https://tablascreek.com/shop
Municipal Winemakers http://www.municipalwinemakers.com/

Del Posto

I had the opportunity to try Del Posto http://delposto.com/ in NYC. It is an Italian restaurant created by Mario Batali and Lidia and Joe Bastianich The food and service were excellent. 

Ravioli

 Veal

 Swordfish

The wines were very good although the wine list too long and it is very hard to take it all in. The wine list is around 180 pages so I had to make my own mini-wine list. I have never done that before but I highly recommend doing this when a wine list is ridiculously long.









Dessert wine





They have an entire room for wine glasses and use new glasses for every bottle. The Somm actually washes each glass with a small amount of the wine to be tasted.This reminds me of a recent wine issue I had at home. 

We opened a bottle of wine and I did not like it. So we used new glasses and opened another very good wine. I could not get my nose near the glass as the smell was so bad. My wife thought I was nuts. I then opened a third bottle and with new glasses and this was OK. My wife then tried my glass from the second wine and because of the smell she could not get near it either. It turned out that some of our glasses had a terrible smell from the dishwasher.

As you can tell by my story, the idea a glass could ruin a wine, never entered my mind. We use very  good wine glasses and usually wash them by hand but occasionally use the dishwasher. Maybe washing the glasses with the wine as Del Posto does is not that wacky or pretentious.

Enjoy