The Cheese Board, what are you drinking?

My spouse is not into natural wine which I can understand. It makes it harder for me though, because if he doesn't like something I am **forced** to finish it all and it gets to be a little too much at times where I just want something very typical as a cleanser.

How much would a decent okanagan pinot noir be where you are?

$30ish canadian

$20 for "not bad"

I'm really in the mood for light and fruity chilled reds,

^^^This plus pet nats are what I have been craving all summer. We visited my mother in law a couple weeks ago in the Finger Lakes and visited two wineries making natural wines (there are only a few doing that in that region). Picked up a couple pet nats and unoaked cab frank near-roses.

I have a pretty high tolerance for natural wine idiosyncrasies, although I have lost my taste a bit for the super dry/tannic orange wine style like in some Georgian wines, which I used to love. I no longer want the enamel stripped from my teeth.

near-rosés

god, cab franc

Oh which wineries did you visit in the Finger Lakes?

I think I put on another wine thread that I drink almost all my reds colder than the standard serving temperature for each type. I always have dudes trying to educate me and I am like "bitch, please."

i'm down with that! like the same temp as the cave. cooler temp partic nice when you are "pique-niquing"

I've been putting ice in mine tbqfh.

And drinking https://www.winetherapynyc.com/images/sites/winetherapynyc/labels/gulp-hablo-garnacha_1.jpg

I love that label. When I have a red that is middling, I also do the red wine spritzer when it's hot out.

Oh which wineries did you visit in the Finger Lakes?

Hickory Hollow/Nathan Kendall. Kendall has been at HH for about three years. The HH wines are basic, but good - that unoaked cab franc was delicious and not too crazy. The wines he makes under his own name are more minimal intervention and the rieslings we tried had more complexity compared to the HH rieslings. I also snagged one of the last bottles of the Chepika wines which is his collab with Pasceline Pelletier, who is a super somm in NYC. Their wines are pet nats made from weirdo non-vinifera indigenous grapes like Delaware and Catawba. Clean and nice.

Bloomer Creek is full on natural/minimal intervention and has been for years. Total iconoclasts - he is a farmer and she is a pretty famous artist. Awesome vibe in the tasting room - like being in someone’s living room and the best wines in the Finger Lakes that I’ve had.

Both these are on Seneca Lake.

Oh, I did a practice champagne service with Pascaline Lepeltier when I was studying for my certified somm exam and I took some of her lectures. I like her because she is so in love with Loire and chenin.

I still have to get out to Finger Lakes. It always seems a little further away than I want to go from nyc. I want to go to all the Element/FLXtable/weiner things and I hadn't heard of Bloomer Creek. It sounds great.

Damn I mangled Lepeltier’s name.

That FLX Weiner place looks right up my alley. Thanks.

I just realized we drove right by it on our way to Hickory Hollow.

The guy that owns them is also a master somm so he always has great wine and beer around.

Our best local sake importer just got a fresh shipment and there is some truly amazing stuff. Kaze no Mori from Nara makes some bonkers good stuff. They specialise in Namazake (unpasteurised Sake) and do really interesting thinks with unusual rice, including some with table rice, rather than sale specific rice.

Such lively, vivacious sake really expressing the rice. The omachi one has such a great balance of rich umami, sweetness, and a slight bitterness. The akitsuho one, dryer, less umami. Both with a pleasant petillance that fired the stopper across the room.

Didn't know I was walking in to a natural kind of wine shop (silver lake wines) this morning. Ended up with a couple. Did not get this gorgeous looking red rose that was described as having some acetic acid type flavor going on. Ended up with a Greek orange from demeter farms called meinklang. And a French cab franc that the salesperson
recommended. Can't wait to try these out someday soon

I've been taking a break lately but today I had a Heretic Petit Rouge belgian-style with Hibiscus, nice.

xpost report back on if you liked anything. Acetic acid will sometimes blow off if you give it some time with air. But maybe they were preparing you for some kombucha'ness.

i love unpasteurized and unfiltered sake.

Yeah, what little (unpasteurized sake) I've tried I have rly loved. Wasn't scared off by the acetic description I just didn't want to leave bottles in my car cuz it a little hot in LA. So only got 2 that I cld fit in a backpack while I wait for Airbnb to let me in.

Xpost oh, that reminds me - had a good hibiscus gose recently. But the cucumber gose (both by The Bruery in Anaheim iirc) was spectacular

Also in sake drinking news I got my desultory back from my WSET Level 3 in Sake. I got a distinction.

Ohhh congrats! Did you hop into level 3 or start from the beginning? I'm still waiting back for results for two units from WSET Wine diploma level 4.

Woah! Congrats! Is this for a career path or just fun?

Xpost

Just for fun, really. I should start a blog and sell advertising because then my drinking would be tax deductible. Good sake gets expensive in Australia. At the moment I write little capsule reviews in Japanese on Instagram, mainly to practice my Japanese.

I did level 1 last year and level 3 this year. It’s quite possible to level 3 without doing level 1. I now meet the minimum eligibility criteria to be an IWC judge for Sake, I’m going to apply but most likely won’t get selected as I don’t have anything else relevant on my CV, but you never know.

I’m off to japan in a couple of weeks and the best part of this is really being able to navigate my way around what’s on a Sake bottle. I went above and beyond the WSET requirements by learning all the Kanji in the back of the book. For the test you only need to know the absolute basics.

I only had to learn the very basics of production and labeling for sake for when I tested for certified sommelier. I think about doing more for sake but I don't have the means to drink enough variety of it right now.

You should be a sake samurai.

It’s very hit and miss if you are outside japan. There are good importers and terrible ones and a lot of stores don’t know how to look after it. Even pasteurised sake can be very light and temperature sensitive and a lot of the stoppers don’t take kindly to bottles being left on their sides.

We’re very lucky to have at least one importer (also my teacher) who takes a lot of care and as a result has been allowed to get hold of some stuff that can even be difficult to find in Japan. He also only does retail through his own two stores, no wholesale, because of promises he’s made to some of his suppliers. Not that I’ve done a huge amount of exploration, but I think we get a better selection here than I’ve seen in San Francisco or London.

I’d be interested to know what Paris is like, I’ve seen quite a few tv programmes where sake makers have worked with great french chefs to pair sake and Haute Cuisine - and activity which is as much about legitimating Sake in the minds of a Japanese consumers.

Idgi, sake in the mind of Japanese consumers is an issue?

Sake consumption has been in decline for years, in favour of Shochu, seen as healthier, and wine, seen as classier. Sake got a bad rep in the Showa era, brewed cheaply with lots of added sugars and distilled alcohol in the war and after and it has (had) a somewhat old fashioned image. Mass market sake, was (and in many cases still is), not great, a lot of rubbish gets tipped in the vat of cheap futsu-shu. (Much like cheap wine for that matter)

There was a bump in the boom years and the rise of Ginjo styles along with a better regulation of what goes into premium grades, but the decline continues, export and premium grade production grows but not overall production.

In the 80s and on, western food and drink boomed (even encouraged by a Japanese government trying to improve its global image and balance of payments). Wine came along as big part of that. The idea that you could drink sake with French or Italian food is somewhat an anathema, so it needs promoting.

There’s a non-negligible trend of sake bottle labels designed to look like wine bottle labels. Often with no Japanese on them.

https://static.tildacdn.com/tild6463-6536-4861-b862-353039376133/debut.jpg

This is oddly fascinating to me. Never would've expected this to be the case what with the trad that I have always thought part of the culture

I don't think there is a 'national' beverage in the world that hasn't seen a decline in consumption and a radical change in what the product is over the last 100 years. In one direction technology has made the commodity version cheaper and more generic; in the other you have new techniques and flavours. Look at beer in the UK, from ales, to commodity bitters to lagers to what is a very American interpretation of craft beer, all in a declining market.

I watched The Birth of Sake documentary on netflix awhile ago but it was a bit plodding, although very pretty and it goes into a little about how hard it is to have the people to maintain the traditional production methods. Ed, did you know that the exam topic for the WSET wine diploma business and marketing unit this summer was about the decline of alcohol consumption and rise of innovation with no and low alcohol wine and spirits?

We went to a Polish-inspired place last weekend called Lis, in Kingston, and this was their wine list:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/mZ5oIVGmO4En5gejo-oyGzJdoRjp-T2xC2USX2L7O0eIKBYZCTfudL3_ky6aRaq5DVmZFxocvpkkf2fquQPExiaC93jiybo4q0bqlMNoWKh_00U_HS-g0YXU-ec4RGUFPdDp3-w1cHtvW5VG9v-bmcW7_4iBvfI65gyjArR27-oF3Xpj-z2MvpbV5ylP6xldG23hLb4TFikSe0n5w16JwT_w-4oObiZNnHTIqq7W6S_y-EwxRglEl8WwQodaZZcEPFaNK4JTp4EUCygxnjXFsSDfFJUakUPr7i9BQzQ9qBcvKixT9-xCtXp6bBAt4fSebNNItXtIRYfrIryM1lP02YXoeKeLXvZyj1Cao-uaazcZPjsR5d_uvXcbkIrQ9_3P14ZiJf4uibySaAMNDsO3S5vkEFPtRgmn-sYz9UMDSAcuFRndjdrq1JZnwA4Gqy1Cox-MWTeOo5ZNzZsvMZBYl2e3zUdJRxHNOLU-wMx2Dw1ILiMdBQ6gLc95b4OH4kAHr-vGBLJX_uOhnGvHQGP2UY9Gsk1iukj0ntNN_HQNHyZZskqqInrGbtK7HABKbkYvz8L_O94yzWeD63mZfFoHDNqb1LQ-QwBMfXSSIwxJ4PGshjiHrgtavbp8EPS2Elv1ksFcNMvRA0sTgrc6z3h2xux6StbRKcQd=w476-h634-no

I had the Czech Marada pet nat and the Nestarec Youngster Rose--both super lovely and different. Highly recommend if anyone is in or around Kingston, first of all, and second, where can I buy all the Moravian wine??

astor wines has a bunch of the Nestarec wines. I had one with l4uren when I was back last.

Fuck that I'm not going to Astor Place.

haha. I have to do 3 other annual errands if I go to that area. For NYC winesearcher is pretty good at locating wines online if you have the producer you want. I just looked at Flatiron but most of their "other regions" wines are Greek.

C's house is in the Catskills? I was looking up where Kingston is on the map.

No, he's in Walden, a bit south of there. We both really like Kingston, though, and I'm trying to get him into the idea of moving there in a couple of years. It's like another hour's drive out of the city where all his clients are, which is an issue.

Ah yeah Walden, I should've remembered although I have a hard time recalling places unless I have been there.

It's fine, Walden is very forgettable. It does have a good wine store, though, for such a small town.

opened the orange wine. it's Austrian, not sure why i thought it Greek. i LOVE this! i get elderflower on the nose that is also conveyed in a slight floral aspect to taste, and also a wee bit of citrus,i think (but not certain the appearance isn't making me say that). from my limited knowledge it is vaguely reminiscent to a rose, but with the aforementioned properties (?). seems to have just a suggestion of effervescence. damn quaffable.
https://www.rawwine.com/wine/weiser-mulatschak/

Oh, that ^ looks really good. in orbit, they carry that at Kingston Wine Co. You should get a bottle.

I don't go into the non-chilean wine that I have in chile very often but when we had people over last weekend someone really liked sweet wines so I opened a bottle of Kracher Trockenbeerenauslese non vintage that has similar grapes to the ^ Weißer Mulatschak, both from Burgenland. I really love good sweet/dessert wines but not many other people do. It's not something I open a bottle of unless other people want to partake. I could drink it all myself but then I feel like the Hulk where every seam is about to pop open and I have flintstone feet.

Lol. Thx to this thread for the existence of this stuff. Wish I could afford to experiment more but am gonna be a poor student for two more quarters, so have to be content with just a introduction for the time being. . .

I usually only open interesting things if people express that they like something that I have an interest in. I've drunk a lot of really crazy $ stuff because other people have been waiting to open a bottle and I happened to be there. The best thing is to have friends who really like wine and you will end up magically drinking really good stuff.

been experimenting with cheap pinot grigios to try and recapture that "Calabrian table wine" vibe, and man this "Sheep Thrills" has a corny label but it's maybe the best $13 bottle yet, all dry/mineral/tart/rocks

there is a semillon here that I like for it's easy neutralness for chile (Las Mercedes, which I am drinking right now) that we buy cases of when it goes on sale so it ends up being about $6 a bottle. I keep a lot of price points in my head of things; it's a lot like record shopping when record shopping was fun. I will remember Sheep Thrills.