Decanting – A Blog about Fine Wine and Fine Dining

Open That Bottle Night (OTBN), an annual event started by the WSJ’s Tastings columnists Dottie Gaiter and John Breche, is always the last Saturday in February. In 2010 that works out to be February 27th. The premise is for everyone to pick one of the bottles that they have been saving for a special occasion – which never comes – and open it before it goes bad…

Perhaps it best to hear straight from the source in this video for last year’s (2009) Open That Bottle Night:

I thought that I would take a minute as we embark on a new decade to review what I think to be some good and bad things going on in wine…

Good

• Value priced wine. This one, is of course, is a product of the recession. But let us hope that the trend to providing more quality wine at reasonable prices will survive the economic recovery (if one ever comes that a consumer would actually recognize).
• Ever expanding wine by the glass programs
• Wine flights on restaurant wine lists
• 2/3 ounce tasting pours – which also allows you to create your own flight
• More and more restaurants offering wine dinners
• More liquor stores with regular in-store wine tastings
• The explosion of great wine blogs – there is simply no excuse for not learning a lot about wine with the number of good people tasting and writing about it.
• More good vintage dated box wines

Bad

• Restaurants that still markup their wine too much. I know that they make a lot of money off of alcohol sales, but paying $25 for a bottle of wine that I can purchase for $9 at retail is just wrong.
• Generic wine lists – it always amazes me that with the abundance of good wine that so many restaurants still make no effort and provide very weak wine offerings. Makes you wonder what kind of care they put into food prep. doesn’t it…

Back in December I wrote about tasting a 2009 Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau Villages. At that time I did not like the wine (as others attested at the time – my favorite being the review that called it tasting like “banana candy mixed in with a little finger nail polish” – See Back to Work!!!).

At the time I hypothesized that maybe the bottle just needed a little more time to age. Well back to my local liquor store to pick up another bottle, where the proprietor told me that Beaujolais Nouveau tasting yeasty is a very common complaint. He also pointed out that the “cork” was synthetic – so the wine would probably taste exactly the same.

He was right. First sniff and taste – yeast! A lot of it. Hiding the fruitiness of the wine.

So theory number 2 – how ’bout decanting? Decant it I did, letting it sit for about an hour. This helped a lot. While there were still traces of yeastiness, the fruit was much more evident. The wine was still only ok, but the decanting definitely helped.

I am, however, starting to think that the whole Beaujolais Nouveau concept is misguided. It sounds good on paper – a simple, fruity, young wine meant to be enjoyed young. The execution, for me, never lives up to the billing. I always get a young wine that tastes like it just barely finished fermenting that would have benefited from a little more care and aging. A couple more months of aging before bottling would probably do the wine a world of good… But then it wouldn’t be Nouveau, it would just be Beaujolais…

Most comitted wine stores have knowledgable staff. Most alos offer in store wine tastings. But most do not have a staff that the establsihment has paid to become certified wine specialists. Most also do not have tastings complete with lectures, handouts, and food pairings. But one does – The Curious Grape in Arlington, VA. Read more here: The Curious Grape offers wine and an education, Nancy Dunham, The Washington Post, January 15, 2010.

I like Cognac. I do not, however, like spending a lot of money on Cognac. And for me, most of the better known Cognac’s are over priced and under performing. So I am always on the look out for Cognac best buys.

My latest find on this front is the Godet V.S. Deluxe Cognac. This is a very nice Cognac that I would compare favorably to most of the big brand name’s VSOP Cognacs. It is relatively smooth for a V.S. but the alcohol is a little hot – which is a complaint I also have about most of the brand name VSOPs. Unlike those, however, I only paid $21.99 for the Godet. In Cognac-land, that is a steal…

You cannot get more off the beaten wine path than Okanagan Lake in western Canada. Well, it turns out that Okanagan Lake is ice wine country – award winning ice wine country.

Check out this article: December is harvest time for ice wine in the Okanagan region of western Canada, By Remy Scalza, Washington Post, January 3, 2010.

I have always been a big fan of Beaujolais. It is usually a simple, pleasant, easy drinking wine. This is especially true of Beaujolais Nouveau. But is it just me or when you taste a Nouveau shortly after release can you still smell the yeast and taste yeast in the wine. I recently had a 2009 Beaujolais Nouveau Villages (Georges Duboeuf) that I purchased at the very end of November and I drank in December. It had a rich deep red color but with my first sniff – yeast (yes I could smell the fruit too, but there was definitely a yeasty smell). Same thing with the first sip – fruit and yeast.

This is not the first time this has happened to me. I have found in the past that if I let the bottle hang around for another month or two, the yeast smells and flavors are gone.

So the wine is meant to be consumed young, but maybe not as young as right after release? For me, I’m almost always happier with it come January of February than in November and December.

With New Year’s Eve just around the corner, many start to think of sparkling wine for the festivities. I found this article which makes for a pretty good primer on the subject: The Wine Column : A guide to decide on bubbly to pick up.

Every now and then a wine comes along that is cheap, easy drinking, and does not require a lot of thought. The L’Authentique Red Table Wine from France is just such a wine. Light and fruity, very easy to drink, and can pair with a very wide range of foods.

This is not a wine to ponder over. It is not a wine to store. Drink this puppy immediately – I cannot imagine that it will improve with age. This is a wine to quaff down either on its own or with a meal.

The best part, I paid $5.99 makint it a best value.

I will purchase this wine again…

The second wine I tasted while planning my Christmas party was the Red Diamond 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington State. The wine is actually a blend with Cabernet Sauvignon making up 80%, Cabernet Franc 10%, Merlot 7%, and Syrah 3%.

This is a heavier, more complex wine than the other I tasted, the 2007 California Cabernet Sauvignon from Camelot Winery. Licorice and leather aromas dominate the nose, and the wine delivers dark berries and oak to the palate. As compared to the Camelot, this wine has stronger, but still pleasant, tannins, more oak, and more complex flavors. The oak, fruit, and alcohol are well balanced making for a very pleasant wine. At $9.99, it too is an excellent value. I would pair it with more robust dishes than the Camelot, but it is still a very good every day Cabernet Sauvignon. I will definitely buy this wine again.

So what did I pick for the party, the Camelot. Why? I thought that the somewhat lighter style might have a broader appeal to my guests. It didn’t hurt that it was $2.00 less a bottle either…