Gone fishin’

posted by Dan in Snooth, Wine, Guest Bloggers

Happy New Year’s Eve, everyone.  I have been traveling a bit seeing family and friends and in my downtime I have been thinking about 2009.  To do that it is inevitable that you dwell a little on the past.  However, it is not time to do that here.  The new year brings new resolutions and I want to state one of mine here, and I hope you all hold me to it.  Last year, my inaugural post was about resolutions and without going into too much detail, I will say that I was 50/50 in achieving the goal I set for myself – to cellar younger wines and attempt to enjoy the fruit of mature wines.

This year I want to get closer to the heart of what Snooth is all about, helping each other “find better wines.”  I will say, you may not find a better wine than the one you are totally in love with, whether it is a Two Buck Chuck Chardonnay or one of Thomas Brown’s Schrader Cabernets.  That is not necessarily the goal, but Snooth offers you the opportunity to expand your palate and try other wines through recommendations and user tag searches.  If you like the ‘muscular’ character of Schrader’s 2002 To-Kalon, go on and search under ‘muscular‘ and you will find 790 wines or so with a similar description.

So, my goal is to offer my amateur insight through tasting notes and tags and ratings on wines. In each profile there is a trophy case that tells you how many friends you have, how involved you are on the bulletin boards and how many wines you reviewed.  In 2008, I reviewed 145 wines.  Or I should say, rated 145 wines.  Most of my ratings were just that less any note about the tasting experience. My goal may not be to rate another 145 wines but to take it a step further by writing my thoughts on the wine.  I don’t think I, or any of us, will eclipse Philip’s one-million-seven-hundred-thousand wines reviewed and rated (not sure how he actually gets any work done while drinking so much), but hopefully in 2009 I will be a more integral part of Snooth’s search community while continuously posting my thoughts on wine and other things related.  That being said, I’d like to hear from you as to what you would be interested in knowing more about from the winemaking side of the business.  I am no expert, just an apprentice making wines I like to drink.  So, if you have some time before you shuffle off to pop the cork on a couple of bottles of Champers tonight, drop a comment in the box below if there is anything you would like to hear first hand about the winemaking process and I will make a point to tackle those curiosities to the best of my ability in up coming posts.

To all of you, thanks for your time and attention.  I am excited to be part of this growing community and I wish us all a happy, healthy and wine drunk New Year.  Eat well.  Drink well.  And enjoy.

Dan Petroski is Assistant Winemaker at Larkmead Vineyards in Napa Valley. Dan has an MBA from New York University and worked as an Ad Exec in New York for several years, before switching it up and trading his suit for a move out west.

Holiday Themes

posted by Dan in Wine, Guest Bloggers

Okay, winos.  I am going to try in earnest to be short and sweet, like a good dessert wine, because I know we are all busy planning our holiday engagements.  However, if you have read an installment or two of my previous posts then you know I tend to ramble on.  So, today I want to wish you all a very healthy and happy holiday season with good (wine) drinking.  And implore you to consider proposing theme drinking when you are planning on raising a glass or two with family and friends this holiday.  Theme drinking when it comes to wine is nothing new.  You set guidelines to the wines you will drink on a particular evening.  Not only is it adventuresome to try and find the wines, but it is also educational and will hopefully expand your palate along the way.  For example….

I hosted a Christmas dinner party with my best Napa friends. I won’t bore you with how I came up with the program for this dinner party, but, in short, it was a detailed look at our names and how the letters translated into numbers.  I always wanted a phone number like Transylvania 6-5000, but in this instance I was able to come up with something equally exciting, vintage 2002.  It made sense, 2002 was a difficult vintage worldwide, but in Napa and Sonoma we were pretty safe with regards to quality.  And living in said wine country, wines from this vintage should be readily available to us, or at least in our own private cellars.  So, the menu was set and my guests were required to bring a wine or two from this vintage.  Here’s how it played out.  Six drinkers, eight bottles of wine.

Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs. A staple in my sparkling wine drinking (from any vintage).  Arguably the best Methode Champenoise made in America and it paired well with Lemon and Rosemary marinated Goat Cheese, Mustard and Gruyere Crisps and Butter and Parmigiano Fennel.

Aubert Chardonnay, Ritchie Vineyard.  Heavy lemon cream and honeydew.  A transition wine, or an aperitif wine, while we moved to the table for a Roasted Carrot and Beet Salad with Arugula and Blood Oranges coupled with a Leek and Celery Root shot of Soup.  The Aubert was a weighty white wine that would have competed with the soup and salad; so, I am glad we transitioned and opened a Fernand & Laurent Pillot Chassagne-Montrachet Grandes Ruchottes 1er Cru that had the perfect amount of oxidation and the perfect amount of acidity to counter roasted root vegetables.

Before the main course of roasted Butternut Squash Lasagna we needed to continue transitioning.  Five red wines sat before us and it was good to taste the wines with and without the food interaction, especially since 2002 in Napa (and Australia) were very ripe, extracted wines; not your every-hour sippers.  Even the Spottswoode Cabernet seemed a little out of style for the reference point Cabernet Estate in St. Helena.  However much intense fruit there was present in this wine, it was still balanced and elegant.  If you are one who bases quality on evenings such as this, with regards to how much wine remains in the bottle at the end of the night, this was the clear winner.  Other reds included a Gemstone Cabernet (with its typical rich, black fruit accentuated with hints of toast over a textured finish); Larkmead Solari Cabernet (more reserved and elegant than the Gemstone; although still a bit tight and needing food to help open its core of cassis and bitter sweet chocolate tannins); Two Hands Shiraz, Samantha’s Garden Clare Valley (what a bruiser, even decanting did little to offset the floral power and oak influence in this wine); it was an intense wine with a lot of excitement factor, it reminded me of the Oscar-Meyer quality of Cayuse’s Bionic Frog. The final red was a Barbour whose elegant herb and tobacco leaf structure was a welcomed surprise from the powerful, intense and concentrated tablemates.  All good showings and I was ever impressed with my friends for finding the joy in drinking wines that we often read about.

The meal finished out of (vintage) character with a Passito from Villagrande in Sicily (Malvasia delle Lipari).  The color of this wine was an amazing amber and (although a summer sipper from my days in Sicily) was paired with an eggnog Crème Brulee, finished with a Nutella Grenache Ice Cream Sandwich.

The night was long and delicious and with the exchange of some presents by the tree and some carols played on the piano, it was a total success.  And I wish you all the same holiday wine-drinking happiness and success in the New Year.  Please share your thoughts about drinking this holiday season (already experienced or pre-planned) and see you all on the other side of the New Year.

Dan Petroski is Assistant Winemaker at Larkmead Vineyards in Napa Valley. Dan has an MBA from New York University and worked as an Ad Exec in New York for several years, before switching it up and trading his suit for a move out west.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

posted by Dan in Wine, Guest Bloggers

With Black Friday and Internet Monday behind us with a swift kick to the start of the Holiday shopping season, PNC Wealth Management, the team that has been reporting annually since 1984 the total cost of the items in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” released this year’s tally. The gifts will set you back $21,080.10.  Up 8% year over year (more than double the Consumer Price Index YOY).  So, in the holiday spirit, I thought I would take the liberty to recreate my own Twelve Days of Christmas inserting the wines on my wish list this year and the cost of these wines based on a simple Snooth search.  Let’s see if I break the bank.

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me….

Twelve drummers drumming,
This is my chance to beat the drum for a case of wine.  So, I’ll close my eyes real tight and hope the big man with the big beard and red sack is carrying twelve bottles of 1989 Luciano Sandrone Barolo Cannubi Boschis.  At $435 a bottle, that’s a fast start at $5,220.  But, hey, we’re in Italy, no better way to travel then in the breathtaking and beautiful reference point for racecars, a Ferrari.

Eleven pipers piping,
Pipers. How about Piper-Heidsieck Champagne?  Although good, I prefer Delamotte, Salon’s second label.  I’ll go Non Vintage on this one at $40 a bottle.  Total: $440.

Ten lords a-leaping,
Frog’s Leap, of course.  I’ll take ten bottles of 2003 Cabernet.  A Snooth search found the wines at $31/bottle.  A steal at $310.

Nine ladies dancing,
Champagne gets everyone dancing, but I got my fill already.  So, how about slow dancing with DuMOL’s 2006 Chardonnay “Isobel.”  Upon mailing list release the wine cost something like $60 a bottle.  That’s $540.

Eight maids a-milking,
Milk and wine don’t mix.  But the PNC report suggests that the “maids” would be eight minimum wage farmhands.  In California, minimum wage equals $8 an hour.  My favorite $8 wine is… who am I kidding?  I can’t remember the last $8 wine I drank and this is a wish list.  So, how about $50 a bottle; then, I’ll take ten bottles of Saint-Julien “Third Growth” Chateau Lagrange (2005).  There will be a great many wines on this list; some will need a little cellaring. $400.

Seven swans a-swimming,
It would be easy to insert a Joseph Swan Pinot Noir here, but instead, I am going to accept all seven Domaine de la Romanee-Conti wines (six Pinot Noirs and one Chardonnay).  Echezeaux, Grand Echezeaux, Romanee St. Vivant, Richebourg, La Tache, Romanee-Conti and Montrachet.  In the secondary market, DRC can fetch more than $3,000 a bottle for a recent vintage.  Seven bottles will break the budget, so why not spend $21,000 swimmingly.

Six geese a-laying,
Here are six bottles of wine I will need to lay down as well. A vertical of Haut-Brion starting from legendary vintage 2000 and ending with another legend, 2005.  That will cost a savvy shopper around $4,000.

Five golden rings,
Portia, the heroine of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, questions her prospective suitors with a choice between three casks filled with gold, silver and iron.  Win or lose her love, I’d think we’d all pick the gold.  So, I’m going with Oriel wine company’s golden delicious blend of Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay and Tocai, called Portia.  For twenty bucks a bottle; times five, that’s a mere $100.

Four calling birds,
I’ll give into buying by the label on this one and begrudgingly accept four bottles of Blackbird Vineyards 2005 Proprietary Red at 80 bucks a bottle.  $320 total.

Three French hens,
Viognier from Condrieu is so seductive, I’ll “cap” these French hens with Rene Rostaing’s 2004 La Bonnette Condrieu.  At a total of $141, and after consuming three bottles in one night, you’ll need more than a rooster to wake me in the morning.

Two turtle-doves,
In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is symbolized by a dove.  In the spirit of the passing of France’s finest Sauvignon Blanc maker, Didier Dagueneau, I will take a bottle of Silex and one of Pur Sang.  That’s $131.

And a partridge in a pear tree!
Sticking with an alliteration, my partridge in a pear tree will be a bottle of Petrus.  How about the Roberta Parker perfect scorer from 1990?  At auction recently, it hit a high of $3,872.  A fine finisher to a list that has gone way over budget.  $36,444.  An average of $467 a bottle, egad!  But, yes (maybe), Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  Hopefully he won’t be carrying any Virginia wines with him.  (Just kidding, you fine winemakers on the East Coast!)

Dan Petroski is Assistant Winemaker at Larkmead Vineyards in Napa Valley. Dan has an MBA from New York University and worked as an Ad Exec in New York for several years, before switching it up and trading his suit for a move out west.