Marques de Caceres Rioja Reserva 2001. All-time favorite. Retailed for about $30. Still have 2 bottles left.

/just cuz

mightybaldking: dramboxf: mightybaldking: // Wife wants me to take her there so we can "explore" the rustic countryside.

I basically live there, and it's not nearly as "rustic" as you think. It's basically just huge swaths of land covered in vineyards. Row after row after row after row of grapes.

However, the weather is amazing and the food is to die for.

What I would really appreciate is being able to buy the GOOD wines by the glass in the tasting bars. It's kind of like that Louis XIII brandy - I'm not paying $1500 for a bottle, but I could be talked into paying $100 for a glass.

BEGIN COOL STORY:

Twin Liqours is hosting an event in Austin on the 13th where The Remy rep will providing a Louis XIII tasting for a $20 event fee. Along with champagne and food as well.

End csb

We make a punch with a wine as a base every Christmas, and for holiday dinners all the grown kids bring a bottle, and I drink when they make toasts, but other than that I seldom drink wine. Neither does my wife, other than an occasional wine cooler at a party or a barbeque.

But my in-laws, my daughters husband's folks, are big on wine. The first dinner up there in Virginia they dragged out something that was very expensive and were bragging on it. But I didn't care for it, so I added some bottled water to it when I thought they weren't looking to see if I could make it taste better but they caught me. They made frowny faces but said nothing to me. It was sort of embarrassing, and Mrs Varmitydog, who keeps score on this kind of crapola, has said that they have never served us anything expensive again. Not that I have noticed. Nor cared.

I got some homemade wine from the old Italian guy down the road from me (he is quite proud of it, his son says it is very good) and gave it to them one year when they were down here, and they served it to me the next time I was up there. Is that some kind of wine etiquette thing?

WaltzingMathilda: Mitch Taylor's Bro: WaltzingMathilda: that definitely sounds like a lot of fun for people passionate about wine. i am not, so luckily i fall into the category of wanting to have a few standby affordable wines that are delicious for dinners, etc. i don't desire too much variety so i don't have to spend money searching for others.

Nor am I. I am getting into scotch, though!

When I am going to a dinner party, I rely on the Bevmo labels that tell you what Wine Enthusiast score each bottle got and divide that by the price. That simple formula is what tells me which wine we'll be drinking at dinner :-)

yeah, scotch is my bailiwick. a lot more expensive than wine, but in my opinion it's worth it.

I dearly love Scotch and Irish whiskey but as much as I enjoy the experience, the next morning finds me in peat induced foaming Santorum-ish agony. I suspect revenge on my English ancestors.

LandOfChocolate: downstairs: LandOfChocolate: Demetrius: My wine cellar, let me show it to you...

[i131.photobucket.com image 640x480]

[i131.photobucket.com image 640x480]

[i131.photobucket.com image 640x480]

You're going to have bad wine if you keep some of those bottles for a long period of time.

The wine needs to be in constant, partial contact with the cork so the bottles that you have standing upright or angled upward will not age well.

Are you sure? Many bottles nowadays have plastic corks or no corks at all.

For the most part yes, particularly those nice bottles of Opus that are angled upward.

I believe it remains to be seen how well plastic corks and screw tops age

I think 95% of wines are not meant to be aged, the 5% need corks the rest can do without. Or so I am told.

Satanic_Hamster: Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeee tthhhhrrreeeeaddddd.

If you're paying more then twenty dollars a bottle, you're generally wasting your money (unless you have enough money, then whatever floats your boat). The difference in quality above that range is fairly minor.

And a lot of winer drinkers/enthusiasts/foodies are bullshiat artists on this subject. It's a $100 dollar wine, so hence they think it's awesome, even if they can't even tell the difference between it and a five buck chuck.

[i58.photobucket.com image 640x480]
[i58.photobucket.com image 640x853]
[i58.photobucket.com image 640x853]
[i58.photobucket.com image 640x853]

I find your OCD disturbing, but it's making me thirsty.....

instantwin: Smeggy Smurf: Now if you offer me some whiskey, apple pie moonshine or rum I'll be happy

[i.imgur.com image 400x455]

/Recommended

I use to have a lot of that, and Diplomatico. Santa Teresa.

/Venezuelan
//Went on a rum tasting at Santa Teresa main plantation.
///There's this rum that's laced with coffee... it's what God drinks.

ChuDogg:
I'll take you on: Jamaican red hair, thai stick, afghani kush, ak47, acapulco gold, etc x infinity = all bullshiat terms of some drug lord down the street from you cross pollinating a variety of random strains together to make something good and needed a name to sell it to suburban bros besides "this is good shiat"

You really think "afghan kush" is from afghanistan? Have you been to afghanistan? Their weed sucks. Aghans only smoke hash because smoking it raw would be like smoking dandy lions.

Or that ak47 sold in Miami is anything remotely the same strain as ak47 sold in New York?


I don't think I've ever gotten a sack just because it's got some silly name like Maui Wowie or Nederwiet. No, that's just silliness you see in a Cheech 'n' Chong movie. Hell, in several decades of herbalizing, I don't recall even one time that some dealer actually referred to a strain by name. However, even the dullest aficionado can instantly tell the diff between Mexican kilobrick schwag and decent skunk.

Please, potheads can be just as drama queens as the wine snobs.

Only the newbies. Most stoners I know don't really give three shiats and a piss about pot snobbery. Just that it smells good and gives a terrific buzz.

Again, the great thing about herb is that the different types do have wildly different psychoactive properties (e.g. sativa vs. indica). With tobacco and alcohol, the active ingredient is pretty much the same, and other than mild variations in flavor, there's not really a difference in the buzz you get...

Psycat: ChuDogg:
I'll take you on: Jamaican red hair, thai stick, afghani kush, ak47, acapulco gold, etc x infinity = all bullshiat terms of some drug lord down the street from you cross pollinating a variety of random strains together to make something good and needed a name to sell it to suburban bros besides "this is good shiat"

You really think "afghan kush" is from afghanistan? Have you been to afghanistan? Their weed sucks. Aghans only smoke hash because smoking it raw would be like smoking dandy lions.

Or that ak47 sold in Miami is anything remotely the same strain as ak47 sold in New York?


I don't think I've ever gotten a sack just because it's got some silly name like Maui Wowie or Nederwiet. No, that's just silliness you see in a Cheech 'n' Chong movie. Hell, in several decades of herbalizing, I don't recall even one time that some dealer actually referred to a strain by name. However, even the dullest aficionado can instantly tell the diff between Mexican kilobrick schwag and decent skunk.

Please, potheads can be just as drama queens as the wine snobs.

Only the newbies. Most stoners I know don't really give three shiats and a piss about pot snobbery. Just that it smells good and gives a terrific buzz.

Again, the great thing about herb is that the different types do have wildly different psychoactive properties (e.g. sativa vs. indica). With tobacco and alcohol, the active ingredient is pretty much the same, and other than mild variations in flavor, there's not really a difference in the buzz you get...

So you're saying that whiskey drunk = tequila drunk = jäger drunk = beer drunk...etc...?

I guarantee you there is a differance.

There is even a differance between cheap wine drnk and good wine drunk.

/ worst drunk ever is cheap champagne (okay fine..sparkling white wine) drunk.

Here is the parody commercial I was looking for...

Foster's Lager - Wine Tasting (new window)

He can tell the difference in less than 26 minutes.

Screw the wine. I'd take a $150 fifth of single malt scotch over a $150 bottle of wine any day.

ScouserDuck:
So you're saying that whiskey drunk = tequila drunk = jäger drunk = beer drunk...etc...?

I guarantee you there is a differance.

There is even a differance between cheap wine drnk and good wine drunk.

/ worst drunk ever is cheap champagne (okay fine..sparkling white wine) drunk.

Whether you're drinking food-grade ethanol or top-shelf single-malt whiskey, the active ingredient is ethyl alcohol. The hops in beer are supposedly mildly psychoactive, but I've never noticed any difference. Unless you're drinking absinthe or green goddess (alcohol laced with THC), you're pretty much getting the same buzz. Any differences you may notice are probably subjective due to rate of consumption and stuff like that.

The only real difference in alcoholic beverages is that they differ in trace chemicals like methanol, propyl alcohol, and other stuff like tannins. It's the trace chemicals like methanol more than the ethanol itself that control the intensity and duration of hangovers. From that perspective, cheapo vodak in the plastic gallon jug is the best because it's just ethanol diluted with water (and maybe a little glycerin or vanilla) and has no trace chemicals. Wine is the worst, especially ice wines because the freezing process increases the proportion of methanol...

Does anybody know what an 'executive martini' is? Basically, it's a martini made with a mixture of vodak and gin.

To me, ordering a martini is simple. If you like the smell of Pine-Sol, order a gin martini; if not, then order a vodak martini*. From this perspective, an executive martini is just silly; all it does is make more work for the bartender and make the person ordering one look vain.

* If you're a sorority gal, then get one of those execrable appletinis, cranberrytinis, or some other god-awful stuff made with 30-proof flavored vodak.

JVD: Screw the wine. I'd take a $150 fifth of single malt scotch over a $150 bottle of wine any day.

Around here, $150 will get a half ounce of decent skunky buds. Sounds like a lot of money, but that will last a month even with daily herbalizing. During my drinking days, it was easy to blow that much money in an evening, especially at a strip joint...

csb time:
I was raised in a rather conservative christian home and our denomination discouraged drinking. After graduating with an engineering degree and an acute case of atheism, I decided that I should look into this whole alcohol thing.
I had the occasion to taste a random $10 - $20 cab when some older friends invited me over for dinner and I gladly took the opportunity but the wine tasted like vinegar to me. I decided to try beer instead and ended up with some random microbrew from the grocery store, which I found to be more agreeable than the wine. Still, the wine thing bothered me. I knew there was no way people would drink something that tasted as horrible as I thought that wine had tasted so I figured it must be an acquired taste thing. After a bit of research, I realized that the tannic nature of cabernet sauvignon was probably my hangup so I decided to try an experiment.
I found a chart on a wine site that ranked the common varieties according to tannins. I started with a few bottles of cheap white zinfandel, which my research had show to be one of the least tannic types of wine, and proceeded to drink them over the course of a week or two (they tasted fine to me). I then moved on to a bottle of merlot, and so on, each time getting further up the tannin chart. After about a month of this, I went over to my friends' house for dinner again and this time, the wine (still a generic cab) tasted like fruit and not like vinegar.
/end csb

Anyway, I've pretty much settled into the $10 - $20 range for 99% of the wine I buy but my trick is to use wine deal sites like WTSO.com Lot18.com and wine.woot.com instead of buying it retail. From what I understand, the wine market is very volatile and highly subject to the whims of the latest consumer trends so you will often see much more expensive wine dumped on these sites for half off retail because the next harvest is coming in and they need the space or they weren't able to predict the market and nobody bought their wine, etc. Hell, I got a great deal on a case of dry Gewürztraminer that was originally being positioned for the Asian market but then got hammered by an increase in the output of cheap Chinese wineries.

Listen, can you name a decent wine for 15$ please than do thank you very much.

phildonnia Bravo, 1st I've seen to make a selection... The rest of Fark are pussy Galore

tonguedepressor: Listen, can you name a decent wine for 15$ please than do thank you very much.

Villa Antinori is like 17 at Costco. My fav sub $20 bottle I've found so far.

unlikely: I find that in France and Croatia and Italy I can get really good stuff much cheaper, but again, I have to listen to the guy at the shop.

I was surprised on our visit to Paris to find that French wine was not remotely over-hyped. We mostly drank the cheapest stuff we could find, all the way down to 4-euro (~$5.50-5.75) bottles and it was all at least OK, and more often than not it was pretty damn good. Here, you're talking at best a 50/50 decent/poor ratio at twice that price. Maybe at the higher end (or even mid-tier, perhaps) US wine competes, but at the low end our wine's a joke.

/ Then again, "here" is the god-awful state of Missouri; perhaps in California, too, one must struggle to find a bad wine at any price, and we just get bad, overpriced shiat shipped to us out here in flyover country.

One taste old. One taste fresh.

markie_farkie: nw_inferno: a rather conservative christian home and our denomination discouraged drinking.

Not to steer an otherwise fine discussion into the weeds, but.....

How do they reconcile the fact that Jesus turned water into wine? I get the part about not being a drunkard.. But, to outright dismiss wine consumption altogether?

My in-laws are all hardcore Church of Christ, and their bible flavor has the word "wine" replaced with "cup" throughout.. Communion is grape juice.

Hmmm...

Oh you'll love this then... [puts on chuch hat]
You see, Jesus turned the water into new wine, which means that it was grape juice because everybody knows wine takes time to ferment, so if it was new...
And yes, the communion wine is grape juice.
/silly seventh day adventists

As for good wine under $15, there is plenty out there, just read some reviews first. If you have as Costco membership check out the Costco Wine Blog. (new window) Actually, I've heard that in some states, due to absurdities in state liquor law, you can actually buy wine or beer at Costco without a membership.

ScouserDuck: tonguedepressor: Listen, can you name a decent wine for 15$ please than do thank you very much.

Villa Antinori is like 17 at Costco. My fav sub $20 bottle I've found so far.

Man, Thank you,
Woman,Thank you.

markie_farkie: My in-laws are all hardcore Church of Christ, and their bible flavor has the word "wine" replaced with "cup" throughout.. Communion is grape juice.

People who drink near wine for communion will get saved by Near Jesus and end up in Near Heaven (TM) on Judgment Day. Near Heaven is kinda like Salt Lake City, but with more Naugahyde and Febreeze.

GAT_00: WaltzingMathilda: f you drink wine because you like delicious wine and don't want to spend money, identify a couple of delicious cheap wines.

In my experience, these seem to sit at about the $15-20/bottle range or so.

Basically this for a long time, lots of easily drinkable wine well below that, like Barefoot, but nothing mind-blowing. Recently, there's this one called Rex Goliath Free Range Red (new window) which is AWESOME (as is their Merlot). And it's $5 on sale, $6 otherwise.

Don't know if you can find it outside of CA, but it's got a lot of what I really love from much more expensive Grenaches. Oddly enough, the Cab and Pinot are much easier to find in stores, despite being fairly generic for the price range; they just don't have the same bold, thick, slightly spicy taste. Most wines in this price category are much thinner and fruit-forward, so it's incredible that something so good is priced so low.

Also, as for article: Familiarity makes it easier to detect and perhaps appreciate minor differences. You don't say?

markie_farkie: nw_inferno: Costco Wine Blog.

[images.quickblogcast.com image 235x307]

HAHAHAAHAHHAAAAAA..... The same generic store brand that brings you pallets of trash bags, cooking oil, and bulk kitty litter, is proud to bring you........ wine!

Sorry, that just struck me as funny..

Laugh all you want but it's actually perfectly good table wine and a couple bucks cheaper than the competition. Anyway, they carry most of the usual (well stocked) grocery store wine brands for $2 -$5 less than the other stores in addition to their Kirkland house brand stuff. You still get better deals on wine on the net, but you can't just run down and pick up a reliable bottle of red, it's usually one time deals. Costco in Virginia also carries cases of New Belgium beer for significantly less than the grocery store...

coffeecrisp:

Baby Duck! Nice! I haven't drank that since college in Brandon! Where you from, All-Canadian Farker?

I listen to these guys.

Ok, here's a question...

I see a lot of mention of an "educated palate" in this thread. If you have to practice and study to learn what taste "good", then does it truly taste good?

Lady Beryl Ersatz-Wendigo: The box of White Zin in my fridge cost about $12.50. It goes pretty well with most dinners.

Spacebag!!!!

Those wine sites make me gag with their attitude.

I guess when you're selling rotten grape juice you don't have much to push it, other than sheer image.

scanman61: Ok, here's a question...

I see a lot of mention of an "educated palate" in this thread. If you have to practice and study to learn what taste "good", then does it truly taste good?

For me it took a trip to napa where I could have glass after glass of 5-6 different things and go back and forth between them all. I'm still learning all the time, but that was when the differences really hit me like a ton of bricks.

For bay area wine connoisuers, apparently this is a big deal. People go and load up on otherwise expensive wines. I blindly grabbed a couple of bottles last time that were normally around $80, for $15. I took one to my parents house for Christmas and it disappeared quickly. That said, I wouldn't pay $80 for it.

Marshall Banana: Those wine sites make me gag with their attitude.

I guess when you're selling rotten grape juice you don't have much to push it, other than sheer image.

Yeah, I think wine snobbery is pretty funny myself. A nice bouquet of pretentiousness, with notes of vanity, and a grating finish with an aftertaste of ho-hum.

No, there's only one thing to get pretentious about: slapstick comedy. Only a total boor would think that the Three Stooges are even remotely funny. At best, a top-shelf 30s Stooges comedy might come close to equaling a lesser Laurel & Hardy, but the execrable crap they were cranking out in the late 40s really sucks--good thing they were filmed on nitrate stock. And, yes, you folks who think Chaplin is the greatest are not even remotely cool as those of us who realize that Keaton is the greatest. And I sneer, yes, sneer at you newbies who wouldn't know a Bowers from a Langdon or a Billie Ritchie from a Billy West. So there!

ScouserDuck: scanman61: Ok, here's a question...

I see a lot of mention of an "educated palate" in this thread. If you have to practice and study to learn what taste "good", then does it truly taste good?

For me it took a trip to napa where I could have glass after glass of 5-6 different things and go back and forth between them all. I'm still learning all the time, but that was when the differences really hit me like a ton of bricks.

l understand having to learn about varietal differences and the such, but when something tastes good shouldn't it just taste good?

scanman61: ScouserDuck: scanman61: Ok, here's a question...

I see a lot of mention of an "educated palate" in this thread. If you have to practice and study to learn what taste "good", then does it truly taste good?

For me it took a trip to napa where I could have glass after glass of 5-6 different things and go back and forth between them all. I'm still learning all the time, but that was when the differences really hit me like a ton of bricks.

l understand having to learn about varietal differences and the such, but when something tastes good shouldn't it just taste good?

For that I would say you would need to have really good wine to be able to taste what wine could/should be. Its like any booze. Many people will say "I can't stand tequila" but then you give them good tequila and their response is "I had no idea.".

But the answer is yes. What tastes good is what tastes good, but it's good to know what the standard for really good is so you can compare.

markie_farkie: mightybaldking: I just pasted that into an email so I have it for reference. August 2013 is the 10th anniversary. This kind of information might come in handy.

Porter Creek was cool.. It's just a guy selling out of his garage.. They harvest all their own grapes by hand, it's all 100% organic, too. He had a big fit when Gallo bought the land behind his, had to force them to install runoff drainage to keep fertilizers and pesticides out of his crop.

My Russian River Valley pics, let me show them to you:

[a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net image 640x426]

[sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net image 640x381]

[a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net image 640x426]

[a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net image 640x426]

[sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net image 480x720]

On the Arista property. There's a ton of picnic areas, and a covered gazebo.

[sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net image 640x426]

[sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net image 640x426]

That's funny, all my pictures from the Russian River trip I took are on the actual RIVER. But then, we went canoeing.

Why would there be any shame in liking a cheap wine? If you can enjoy something cheap, you're much better off than someone who needs something expensive to be satisfied. Personally though I think it all tastes like ass, I'll take a beer.

Read the description