The Cheese Board, what are you drinking?

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.

I love your viniculture pov (and knowledge ofc) and wish I had a knowledged person's brain to pick locally. but alas and alack have to be satisfied with this thread that has people that are gaining my trust. Not complaining! As in food, you need to find a like mind/pallette.

A wine bar local to me had some vin jaune available by the glass, meaning I finally got to try some, after a Yerac recommendation way upthread; it was delicious and twisted my mind slightly by tasting (and smelling) quite a lot like good sherry but with an amazing sour note that I've never found in sherry. I would like to drink quite a lot more of this stuff. Sherry is so much cheaper though.

I really like that characteristic sherry note. I should really learn what it iOS I chemically speaking because it appears in so many good aged drinks (koshu, sherry, huangjiu, etc)

It's biologically (when it has a film of yeast (flor/voile)) and oxidatively aged. This has a good pic of the sherry aging process which is similar to vin jaune.

https://www.sherrynotes.com/2013/background/sherry-solera-system/

"In Okinawa, Japan, where awamori is made, the traditional system similar to the solera is called shitsugi."-wiki
The shitsugi is very cute.

Have drank way too much awamori in my life, beware the ones with the coiled habu pit vipers in suspension at various izakaya in Ishigakijima.

Knew that oxidization plays a part in both vin jaune and solera jerez, but did not know specifically that both shared the same flor properties (thanks Yerac).

Ed: this might be the compound you're after? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sotolon

When I was in Meursault last month we stopped at a random, empty tasting room to escape the rain and the guy was uber talkative and proud of Meursault wines (obv). I usually just nod along to basic things people try to tell me like "this is how you swirl your wine" O RLY and try to subtly let them know through conversation that they can skip the super basic chatter. Anyway, it was hilarious when we mentioned that we live in Chile part time and he made a super scoffy face and said that chilean wine was all watery. Which I can't even be mad at because I get what he was saying.

Anyway, the point of this story is that I taught him the word 'petrichor' which he absolutely fell in love with and wanted to know how I knew this word and we googled the shit out of it. And he in turn, because it was related to that, taught me 'geosmin' which I did not know. Both are very excellent words to know (related to wine).

Is Chile also a popular country for malbecs?

Strongbow, ginger beer snowballs, jaegerbombs, rum and coke, rum and rum, brandy, rum, vodka and red bull, some other stuff

― Under the influence of the Ranters (Noodle Vague), Sunday, March 4, 2018 6:58 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

God I love NV

xpost , chile has some malbecs but it's definitely the Argentinian identity or I guess for people who then go to Cahors (france). Chile is known for good value cabernet sauvignons/bordeaux blends. I don't eat meat at home and I don't have a sweet tooth so I don't usually go for big, fruit forward cab savs. If I am drinking a red chilean wine it's usually old vine carignon, cinsault, or pinot noir. They have syrah here but it can get really one note/flabby.

They have some interesting natural wine being made with Pais, which is the mission grape, but it sometimes can get overly sour after a glass or two.

cabernet sauvignons/bordeaux blends

curious what you mean by this?

Only certain grapes are allowed in Bordeaux for the labeling to say Bordeaux (white: semillon, sauvignon blanc red: usually some blend of cab sav, merlot, cab franc, but petit verdot, carmener, malbec are also allowed). When they use that assortment of grapes in California or Chile it's called a bordeaux blend or meritage.

it's just shorthand so you know what the grapes are and the style whenever those grapes are blended into the finished wine. Bordeaux is actually experimenting with allowing new grapes for the first time because of climate change.

eek. right, got it.

muscadelle is another white one, no?

yep!. It's been a running criticism of that movie Sideways that it kind of tanked merlot sales for such a long time with his comments that merlot sucks but then at the end he drinks the Cheval Blanc that is mostly merlot and cab franc (right bank bordeaux).

lol i have resisted that movie forever.

the only reason i know about muscadelle is because the first ever visit i made to a chateau was to a place that made sauternes, and the woman in charge took us through the whole process, told us about "noble rot", and the three different grapes she used. i used to think muscadelle was the same grape from whence came muscadet but NO that would be too easy.

wait, then what's muscatel?

yeah it's all very confusing. Muscadet is a wine from the Loire made with the grape Melon de Bourgogne which you would think would be found mostly in Bourgogne (Burgundy), but no. We call it the poor man's Chablis. I love it. And then there is muscadelle and moscatel/muscat and there are a bunch of varieties of that. And Sauternes is usually labeled Sauternes (or one of the other botrytises sweet aoc's nearby) and not Bordeaux unless it's a dry wine made in Sauternes then it can be labeled Bordeaux. It's a lot of rules.

this is a world i will never have the strength to communicate in

or one of the other botrytises sweet aoc's nearby

i only understand "one of the other ______ nearby"

Muscadet is awesome. One of the great shellfish wines, especially oysters, even good with spaghetti and clams. Also, they are relatively cheap in that you can get a top notch one for about $22 and a very good one for less.

I think it's harder for americans (and others of the 'new world') to feel comfortable with wine from old world (france, italy, spain etc) because it is a whole different language. Like, they don't put the name of the grape on the bottles because the ideal is that wine should be a reflection of the region/land/terroir first and foremost so you have to know the style of the wine based upon the region on the label. And each country has it's own system of designations. Like, in France it's the AOC/AOP so if a cheese says it's camembert or comté then it must be from a certain region and made under certain guidelines. If a wine says it's Chablis or Vouvray or Champagne it must be made within a certain geographical region with certain grapes, under certain guidelines.

ultimately though it's all just wine. My spouse really likes any grocery store chardonnay that's super buttery/oaky/alcoholic. It always makes me want to eat a pineapple pizza.

good pairing recommendation!

any grocery store chardonnay that's super buttery/oaky/alcoholic.

How do you deal with this given your interests?

he's a cheap date!
(plus I am actually not that snobby about wine, I will drink almost anything, especially in the interest of being able to make mental comparisons, benchmark things).

i just scrolled up and i am proud to say that i do know what "petrichor" means

one of the things about doing blind tastings is systematically assessing wines to determine the grape, region and quality/price level. xpost

I always used petrichor in a figurative, emotive way and didn't really know about the compounds underneath.

being knowledgeable doesn't need to mean being snobby at all!
idk anything about compounds, only the smell

Lol! As long as he doesn’t try to get you to order Yellowtail instead of a nice Chablis when dining out.

I guess I am being snobby, but I prefer choosy ;)

I have no formal wine training, but do fear I would not be able to differentiate wines blind. One of the only times I tasted blind I did identify an old school sauv blanc from Bordeaux as sauv blanc but probably because it was so weird.

He actually does know a lot about wine now through me, but I do order all the wine or beer for both of us because I know exactly what he likes and since I am not too choosy I will switch out our glasses if he prefers what I am drinking.

I should aspire to your level of flexibility. My wife is easy in that she doesn’t care too much. She will tell what she likes and generally our tastes are very similar. She probably has less tolerance for sweetness, where I will go crazy for a sweet wine with a ton of acidity

Interesting that sotolon was isolated from fenugreek. I love the smell and taste of fenugreek as well. One of the first things I’m going to do when I get back to Sapporo is head to Soup Curry Heaven Goraku; they really major on the fenugreek in their soup and it is delicious.

I just created a "Wines to Look for and Try" list on my phone thanks to this thread. Dunno when I'll get back to Kingston but I will definitely find that wine store.

Btw my local Bklyn shop has a couple of the Nestarec varieties, but 1: Not the one I had at Lis, and 2: They're over $30 a bottle. Which is too much for a normal evening imo although maybe if I was entertaining.

I will go crazy for a sweet wine with a ton of acidity

― Mazzy Tsar (PBKR), Tuesday, August 13, 2019 8:51 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Very curious about what some examples of this type might be?

Most good sweet wines have a ton of acidity because it's needed to balance out all the sugar. Were you still at my house during that Harry Potter thing when I opened a dessert wine? It was a Moulin Touchais, 96 or 97, from Coteaux Layon in the Loire (chenin blanc). It's botrytised (noble rot- grapes were able to achieve a certain moldiness on the vine and the water evaporates making the grapes have more concentrated sugar and gives gingery, candied notes). Not all sweet wines have this rot, it's just a certain style in regions and years where it can produce humidity but also dry off during the day so it doesn't turn into the bad rot.

popular famous ones would be sauternes (fr), tokaji (hungary), beerenauslese or trockenbeerenauslese (TBA) from alsace, germany or austria, vin santo (italy).

I don't remember a Harry Potter thing or a dessert wine tbh! C and I came over to your then-new condo once iirc but I don't remember anything about that night, total memory-wipe. Wth?

Hmm typically I don't like sweet wines at all, prefer rocky/minerality/citrus/tartness. What I was wondering is whether some of the tart wines that I like actually have sweetness underneath for balance, which I've been overlooking because I'm focused on the tartness.

I want to do a wine tasting class just because I know what I like but I don't know how to talk/share about it.

kinda blowing my mind that there's a "good" botrytis, it is also the bane of weed growers fyi