Accumulation

Tonight was my last wine class.  The topic: Sonoma County wines and travel tips.  This time, the class is located at a liquor store.  What is the advantage?  You can buy the wine after class.  What’ the disadvantage?  You can buy the wine after class.

The wines that we have had are not “break the bank” wines.  Some are more expensive than your average $10 bottle.  But since they’re kind of special, I’ll get a few.  Well…  a few has added up.

Tonight’s picks were the 3 on the left of this photo.  Ridge Lytton Springs is a very smooth, mostly Red Zinfandel wine.  I’ve had this wine in these classes a few times and always have loved it.  We started class tonight with the Valley of the Moon Pinot Blanc.  It was nice.  Refreshing.  I liked it.  It wasn’t super expensive, so I got it.  The 3rd wine in the picture is an Alexander Valley Cab that is the instructor’s go-to wine for a good Cab that isn’t super spendy.  When he did a blind comparison to an $80 bottle of Cab to this $20 bottle, everyone liked the $20 bottle.

Two weeks ago was the Napa class.  The weird-looking label on bottle #4 is called Palermo.  It’s a Cab and I loved it!  It was super smooth – low tannins.  The instructor also talked about Frog’s Leap vineyard during that class.  The guy that runs Frog’s Leap doesn’t irrigate.  I didn’t take super good notes because I’ve heard about this guy before.  But I think he does biodynamic farming.  Anyway… it would be a cool place to visit.  I haven’t tried Frog’s Leap wine, but I now have a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

Last week was the class about Mendocino wines.  We had the Chateau Montelena Riesling.  If you’ve watched the movie Bottle Shock, you need to just have a bottle from Chateau Montelena.  It was their Chardonnay that the movie is about, but the Riesling is quite good and will go with a lot of foods.

The other three in the pictures were wines that I bought because of having them in one of these classes.  The Cotes du Ventoux and Crozes Hermitage were ones that we had during the “Wine and War” class.  I got them over a year ago.  I don’t remember much about them.  I just know that they were good.

The Vina Carneiro is a wine we had in the last class – Hidden Gems of the Wine World.  The grape is Mencia, from the Ribeira Sacra area of Northern Spain.  There is so little of this made, that it’s amazing that we can get it here.  The wine laws are different in each state.  I’m fortunate to live in a state that has over 30 importers, so we get a wide variety here.  Some states, larger than mine, have less than 10.  The state of Pennsylvania has one – it’s the state that controls it.  Anyone in PA is not going to get a good variety of wine in comparison to other states.

Geeze, I’m just full of little tidbits about wine!  Too bad I don’t have it all organized in my head.  It sure would be fun to teach adults about wine!

So…  I’ve accumulated all of this wine that I deem “special.”  My problem is that I feel like I need a special reason to open it.  I think that just means that I need to have people over who would appreciate it!

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