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July 18 2006

Rock Stars for Wine Lovers

I’m back from my trip to the Central Coast, at least mentally—though, I’m still on the left coast wrapping up some business.  This is the longest I’ve left the blog behind without writing since I launched.  Frankly, I missed it. 

One of the more interesting aspects of the trip was the fact that I met not one, but three winemakers—Dave Caparone at Caparone Winery, Frank Nerelli at Zin Alley and Erich Russell at Rabbit Ridge on Friday. 

I’ll write a narrative of each in the next few days because each of them really have an interesting story and Caparone, in particular, is an absolute gem. 

A barrel tasting with Dave Caparone at Caparone Winery

With Erich Russell at Rabbit Ridge.  I think Erich thought I was a rep. from Young’s because he and his wife had just wrapped up a big distributor tasting when I jumped in for a picture.  California retailers should now be carrying Rabbit Ridge more aggressively—the reps. that I saw were buying schwag—that’s how much they enjoyed the experience. 

Frank Nerelli and I at his Zin Alley winery.  The guy does 300 cases of the most insanely rich, silky beautiful Zin you can imagine.   

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July 17 2006

Wine Sediments

I have a post on the Wine Sediments portion of the Well Fed Network today.  I’m still traveling and putting notes together from my trip to the Central Coast, but I did put together a dispatch from the Hitching Post 2—the restaurant made famous nationally by the movie "Sideways."

You can check it out here.

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July 12 2006

Where I went on my Summer Vacation

Good Grape will be be quiet for a few days—into next week—as I head out to California to do a Central Coast wine jaunt.  Thanks for coming by and check back next week when I should have  some decent pictures, a story or two and hopefully  a lot of new wine!

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July 11 2006

Wine Finds on the Internet!

Iwas on Flickr.com last night, minding my own business, when I saw, of allthings, Japanese Wine flavored Kit Kat Bars.

Itseems that the Japanese, noted trendmeisters, are lucky enough to get seasonaland one-off Kit Kat bars—including a wine flavored bar that actually includeswine on the inside.

Thesearen’t available in the states and can be found in small qtys. On eBay here.

Thecopy on Flickr says:

Surprisingly they have a great wine flavor inside! Almostlike Port, but not quite as sweet. Not to say they aren’t sweet! The outer’chocolate’ shell is semi flavored, but the real flavor is the red center.They’re really interesting. A shame they’re not sold in the US.

The Kit Kat Wine contains 0.12% alcohol by volume, and is based on a powderedversion of French red wine inside the cream filling, giving the white chocolatea light purplish tone. It has a distict wine aftertaste.

Ifyou’re absolutely hankering for some wine and chocolate, this specialtychocolatier also offers wine related chocolates for purchase.

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July 10 2006

News, Notes & Dusty Bottle Items

Iran across the Harvard Business Journal equivalent for food and wine. Gastronomica is a quarterly journal on foodand culture that takes a very literate approach to food and vino. You can find the site here.

Their writing is pragmaticallyapproachable, but smart and very much appreciated.

Though,be warned, like the Slow Food movement where the enjoyment of a quietrepast is to be savored, this journal isn’t timely or even verycurrent.

Towit, the letters to the editor features a letter in response to an article fromthe Summer 2004 issue. And the issue I’mreferencing, the Spring 2006 issue, has a review of Mondovino, which, um, wasat Cannes in 2004 and released onDVD in July of 2005. Despite this, thereis also an interesting story on wine in Thailand (according to the article theThai vintners work with Aussie consultants) and it is deemed very good—even tothe extent where it is confused with a French Syrah in a blind tasting—despite Thailandhaving a tropical monsoon climate.

Alsoin the issue is a first-person narrative by a guy named Robert Chirico who won1^st place, basically on a fluke, in the Sutter Home “Build a BetterBurger” contest in 1991.

Ithink Sutter Home is celebrating 16 years of the contest, so Robert took theprize in year two. He won $10,000,nothing to sneeze at, but the $50,000 they are giving this year sounds betterto me.

Interestingthat the article noted that most entrants were professional contestants—peoplewhose hobby it is to enter food contests.

Man,that’s crazy. That’s like a guy intechnology by profession keeping a web site about wine or something …

TheSutter Home site has the recipe that Chirico won with and it can be found here.

Ingeneral, I think the last time I had Sutter Home was the equivalent of my wine Mesozoicera, that is too say when I knew White Zinfandel wasn’t really a guy’s kind ofwine, but I didn’t know that it wasn’t really much of a wine at all i.e. a longtime ago.

But,their web site seems like they are doing some other interesting marketing typesof things. Their blog isn’t interesting,though, and seems like a marketing flack is tasked with updating it. But, they are doing a woman-centric readingclub in conjunction with Harper Collins book publisher, which is a no-brainer. My wife would love to be in reading club withsome girlfriends and have a glass of wine. 

Formy purposes, though, a reading club doesn’t really work because at any giventime I may have four books in some stage of being read with a queue nine deepof others waiting. And, frankly, I don’tknow too many guys that want to talk about any reading besides ESPN TheMagazine and certainly not the non fiction wine and business books thatpopulate the shelf.

Ifthere is another person that buys more books off of Amazon.com then me, I’dlike to meet them. I’m actually quiteimpulsive about it; I’ll just see a mention on a web site and go buy it. I actually did this tonight with the ChrisAnderson book, The Long Tail – which I borrowed from the source article for apost on what could be the Long Tail of wine.

It’sthe impulsive nature that really drives my wife crazy. She’s more disciplined when it comes to herbooks.

But,to me, I’d rather spend the $15 to $30 bucks and have the book shipped andavailable to me when I want to read it rather then make a special trip to thestore.

Thispoint leads me to the introduction of a wine service. I’ve mentioned them before—RadCru.com. Very interesting notion—basically they offerone wine a day—usually from artisan producers that are very boutique, ordifficult to find—this is the allure because if you don’t snatch a bottle up,you may not have a chance to run across it any time soon.

Youcan check out the offering at their site www.radcru.comand sign up. The first offering fromTitus Vineyards is inspired—only 95 cases produced and a mention from Parker,too. Probably an excellent pick out ofthe gate because it combines their positioning of small lot production withhigh quality. The site mentions that 20cases remain—RadCru has a reported 4000 people signed up for their launch, soit’s very possible and maybe likely that they’ll move all 20 cases in theirinitial offering.

Forme, though, I can’t get the shipments in Indiana. But, at $60 a bottle, I’d have to probablypass anyways—for the Amazon.com reasoning above. $25 for an impulse buy is okay, but $60 +shipping and the more disciplined shopper in my family, who leaves me aloneabout my book buying habits, would look be looking askance at me—seriouslylooking at me with arched eyebrow.

So,here’s hoping for two things—that RadCru looks askance about shipping to Indiana, or my state gets ourshipping deal figured out and that RadCru incorporates a mix of price points toensure steady growth and the surprise factor.

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