Sunday Wine Night

For the past few Sundays a bunch of friends, my wife and I have been going to a really cool wine bar called 13 Celsius. On Sundays they have half off of all the bottles that were opened on Saturday. It's super affordable and we get to taste a whole bunch of varietals for super cheap. Anyway last Sunday we broke with tradition and went to Block 7 Wine Company to go taste Educated Guess Cabernet, which a friend of mine has been raving about and we really wanted to taste. Unfortunately they were sold out and instead we got a bottle of 2007 Spellbound Cabernet, it really was not great and tasted strongly of fake lemon juice. I didn't think it was terrible but some people at the table felt it was the worst bottle of wine they had ever had. Strong words!

After that we decided to head over to our place to open a couple of bottles that we had at home. We had a great Beckmen Vineyards 2006 Purisma Mountain Vineyard Syrah from Santa Ynez Valley, which was a unexpected gift from an awesome customer of mine. It was bold and sweet and seriously delicious. After that we opened a bottle of Domaine Carneros Brut which was delicious and reminded me of Appletizer, my favorite soda growing up in South Africa. The Brut was delicate and I don't think it was a good idea drinking it after such a big Syrah but I think everyone still enjoyed it.

We really had a great night but I think we will stick to 13 Celsius on Sundays from now on.

"Grüner Veltliner, sounds like a cheap foreign car."

In my quest to gain wine knowledge I stumbled across an e-book on the Barnes and Noble App on my iPhone, called Educating Peter by Lettie Teague. It's a fantastic read that covers almost every major wine region in the world and gives beautiful descriptions of each place and the kind of wines that come out of the different regions. It is written as a true memoir of how Lettie Teague (Wine Editor for Food and Wine) educated Peter (who happens to be a very critical and highly entertaining film critic) on everything wine. They taste many wines together, talk to many different wine people together and even take a trip to Napa to tackle Peter's aversion to Cabernet Sauvignon. I found it very difficult to put down and finished the 650-page book in a bit over a day.
Anyway... once I finished the book I googled Lettie Teague and found a fantastic article she recently wrote about Grüner Veltliner, a varietal I had never heard about much less tasted.
With the subject of the essay fresh in my mind, my wife and I found ourselves at Block 7 Wine Company in Houston, TX where there was the 2007 Schloss Gobelsberg “Gobelsburger” Grüner Veltliner, Kamptal, Austria by the glass. This was very exciting and the wine did not disappoint. It was one of the most unique white wines I have ever tasted. Now I really don't know much about wine but I have read that Grüner Veltliner has a characteristic peppery nose, unfortunately I didn't get very much on the nose. I did taste some citrus and it was a delicious wine. The aftertaste had a slight metallic flavor and I wondered what might have caused that? It was an interesting aftertaste and I actually enjoyed it.
While I was enjoying the newly discovered wine I also became disheartened as I began to wonder if I would be able to tell one white wine apart from another in a blind taste test.
Maybe that is something I could test in awhile. I could order a bunch of different wines by the glass at a restaurant and ask the waiter to bring them out but not tell me which is which. Writing this down makes me realize how awesome and expensive this experiment would be. Can't wait to do it but I'll probably wait until I have tasted a few more wines and maybe gotten a raise.

First Post

For a while I have been trying to figure out what job or industry I could see myself being involved in. I knew I always had a passion for drinking wine but never thought of it as a career choice. After many bouts of indecision I finally realized that wine is my passion and could lead to a fulfilling career. But ... how does a total wine amateur, who doesn't know the difference between a Shiraz and a Syrah (yes that was a joke), learn enough about vino to get into the wine industry? The answer, at least in my opinion, is to immerse myself in anything and everything wine.

This blog is a journal of my journey.