Wine for the Masses

Wine, Cheese, and Michigan

As a further jaunt into the wealth that Michigan offers, let us take a peek at Black Star Farms.

There are not many wineries (that I am aware of) that feature the diversity that is hosted by Black Star Farms. Most wineries sell cheese, but few actually make it alongside the wine. And then when you're not feeling quite snooty enough, go for a horse ride in the stables. Wine, cheese, and equestrian fun; all in one place. Upper-middleclass eat your hearts out!

However, despite the non-standard approach to a winery, the wines offered are quite good. I have fallen in love with a particular Riesling that, though it's not in the traditional blue bottle, is still extremely tasty and good. It only gets better with a nice bit of cheese on wheat crackers.

Posted by Ben at 10/26/2005 04:44:00 PM 0 comments

Toast the Season

If you want an atypical way to spend a weekend (or two) in November, take a trip up into Michigan for the Leelanau Peninsula Vintners' Toast the Season event. It is a great way to see some gorgeous countryside in our northern neighbor as well as appreciate some truly remarkable wines.

The celebration covers November 12 & 13 and November 19 & 20 and your starting winery is given to you when you purchase your tickets. The event will run you $35/person or $60/couple plus fuel. Food is provided at your stops and you also receive wine glasses (one per person), a grapevine wreath and/or ornament (stocking stuffers!).

Traveling tastings like this are usually very well prepared and a great way to spend a weekend. They give you a very good plan on how to sample many different wines and also note the differences between regions and wineries. It's a good thing!

Posted by Ben at 10/26/2005 04:23:00 PM 0 comments

Der Eiswein

Have some extra cash and want to impress the ladies (or fellows) with a bit of off-kilter wine knowledge? Grab yourself a bottle of ice wine and head for home!

Ice wine (originally Eiswein in Germany) is a more expensive wine than you usually see in stores. It is usually made from Riesling grapes that tend to lend their name and juices to the Riesling wines that come in lovely blue glass bottles Whereas almost all wines are picked at harvest when they have ripened upon the vines, some grapes are left on until the first hard frost. At this point, the grapes have frozen and are harvested and processed.

Since they grapes are not allowed to thaw, the water crystallizes and the wine is naturally sweeter than a normal pressing would be. However, since the produce levels are lower due to crop rot, birds and fruit falling from the vine, this late season wine is higher priced than most. Ice wine is a very pleasant wine and will make any evening a little bit more special.

Posted by Ben at 10/18/2005 10:58:00 PM 0 comments

Wine Pairs (White Edition)

Part deux... the whitening. White wines can be very nice as a non-dinner wine, but can be paired effectively to work with your nightly meal quite well. Plus, they are nice for a summer drink because of their usual chilled serving temperature.

Simple Whites (Light)
These tend to be simple (thus the grouping) wines that are not generally complex like a dark red, but still have some nuances to them. They can be wonderful surprises at times with soft or flashy finishes. They are some of my favorites for a picnic with that special someone. Usually the wines we think of for this group are those such as Gewurtztraminer, Pinot Gris, Pinot Grigio, Reisling, White Zinfandel and Semillon. They also have the benefit of not being very expensive. Any of these are readily available for less than $20 and have excellent qualities. They are best paired with soups and salads, chicken and turkey, fish in light sauces, mild cheeses and egg dishes. They are a nice light wine that do not cover the subtle tastes of some of these dishes.

Dessert Wines
Dessert wines can be some of the most disliked and also loved wines that there are. They are much sweeter than other varietals (with the exception of Port, which is its own thing), but also have some very pleasant qualities. They are a great finish to a rich dinner and allow you to end the meal with a sweet note and gradual conclusion. They include the Ice Wine (Eis Wein), Late Harvest Reisling, Orance Muscat and Auslese Reisling. They are usually paired with poundcake or fruit desserts, mild cheeses, and creamy desserts and custards. They really follow their name as a wine that is best left for the end to a lovely meal.

Sparkling
This odd bunch spans the boundry between meals and desserts. Many times the sparkling wines are misclassified as Champagne but true champagnes must come from that region of France like true scotch must be distilled in Scotland. Sparkling wines include Asti Spumante, Brut, Demi Sec and Moscato D'Asti. They can be sweet to very dry and are not one of my favorite groups. I have had too few excellent sparkling wines and too many bad ones at New Year's Eve parties. They can be paired well with mushroom based pastas, fish with light to rich sauces, pork dishes and yet also with poundcakes or fruit desserts, and soups or salads.

Posted by Ben at 10/18/2005 10:19:00 PM 0 comments

Wine Pairs (Red Edition)

What wine goes with spaghetti? Or pork chops? What should you pair with your tailgating rib selection? Answers to all your questions today!

Light Reds (Fruity)
These tend to be wines that may be red but are semi-sweet with a light red color and fruity parts to them. These are generally Pinot Noir, Gamay, or Roses. If you want to pair this with foods, you can try it out with turkey/chicken, wild game birds, BBQ, hamburgers and grilling, pork with fruit sauces (read chutneys), fish in rich sauces, and rich mushroom pastas or tomato and cheese dishes.

Medium-Bold Reds
These tend to be stronger red wines but not the driest ones. They include (but are not limited to) Chianti, Shiraz, Merlot and Dolcetto. They can be paired with the same foods as the light reds with exception of the fish dishes. They also work with medium to strong cheeses.

Bold, Full Reds
These are the dry reds that have very dark red color and stain your carpet the best. They can be overwhelming for new wine drinkers and must be paired with foods that can stand up to the flavor. They include the Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Bordeaux wines. They are best paired with beef steaks, ribs and stews, strong cheeses, tomato and cheese pastas and other meats in strong, savory sauces. They also work well with BBQ and hamburgers or pizzas. Often I have found that they are ultimately best with grilled, marinated steaks that have a stronger flavor and work well with the complex reds.

Posted by Ben at 10/17/2005 06:15:00 PM 0 comments

Lonely Wine

If you find yourself sitting alone on a weekend with a box of chocolate cake mix, fudge frosting and $20 to spend on yourself, I have an excellent suggestion. Make your chocolate cake (use Coke instead of water for a carmel-like taste and a fluffier batter) and spread lots of frosting over the whole thing.

While your cake is cooling and such, head over to a wine shop and pick up a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon (I personally like Woodbridge 2001). This wine tends to have a nice deep taste with complex aroma and finishes smooth with a chocolate hint along with plum or various fruits. It is usually a dinner wine, but I like it with nice rich chocolates and depressing movies. Great pairing and the bottle doesn't seem as threatening halfway through.

Posted by Ben at 10/16/2005 10:10:00 PM 0 comments

Blog Blogging Blog

If you tire of the simplicity and sparce features of Blogger (though it is good for a training tool), I would recommend that you check out either Moveable Type or WordPress. WordPress tends to have a bit more power and tweaking potential, but Moveable Type can be a bit more setup/user friendly. Whichever way you go, the end result has more basis in your ability to form your work than the software running it (compare Jacqui and Clint [potentially offensive content]).

Posted by Ben at 10/15/2005 10:13:00 PM 0 comments

The Games We Play

If you want to learn about wine, food pairings, varietals, etc and yet also want to play around and not feel like you are learning, I have a recommendation. Give up on studying and just go play. In fact, play board games! To learn about wine though, you'll need to play a particular game but it will still get the job done.

There is a great game from Tamara called Winerd (Wine + Nerd = Winerd). It is quite entertaining and good for a party where you eat cheese or have nothing else to do.

Posted by Ben at 10/15/2005 10:05:00 PM 0 comments

I Do...

My cousin got married this weekend. Yay. At the reception, they had 4 different (but similar) wines from Olivery Winery (yes, I was quite happy).

• Camelot Mead (one of my personal favorites)
• Soft White
• Soft Rosé
• Soft Red

The semi-sweet wines were an average-to-good choice for a diverse crowd. There was predictably no dry or semi-dry wines available thought it would have been nice to see a Reisling. The semi-sweets that they offered were well accepted and appeared to be enjoyed by most of the attendees. Unfortunately it was obvious that many people didn't know much about the different types other than the colors.

I started with Camelot Mead, a very interesting wine. Mead is traditionally a drink made of amixturee of honey, water and yeast, also known as "honey wine." Camelot Mead follows this form of beverage with a wine made from fermented honey (no grapes here) and ends up with a rare commercial product that has a light, clean taste with a hint of honey and orange. There is a slightly tart finish to the wine that leaves thepalettee feeling fairly refreshed. I also found this to be particularly fitting given that it is generallybelievedd that mead is part of the origins of the term "honeymoon."

Next, I tried the Soft White. It was a bit sweeter than I prefer, but it still had some good points. This wine has a very well developed bouquet (aroma) that has bits of fruit and grape evident. It isn't overpowering like a strong red, but still gets noticed when close by. The Soft White is made from Niagara grapes which are not generally classified as a great grape for wine. Overall, the wine had an average taste with a full,fruity finish. It left a bit of a diesel-aroma but not largely so.

The Soft Rosé was my next choice and left me feeling about the same as the Soft White. I remind you, loyal reader, that these are not my favorite wines as a class so I may be overly harsh on them. It had a very good color that matched the nearby fall decorations at the wedding and it had a good aroma that seemed to hint at a flashy wine. The flavor was good with a lot of fruit and bang for a semi-sweet wine. However, the finish was not up to what the initial taste seemed to hint and it left me feeling like I had missed something. The Catawba grapes are a fairly good grape that have a purplish-red color that was probably a portion of the color that seemed to shine for this wine.

Finally I tested the Soft Red. This was my second favorite wine of the evening because of its similarity to the semi-dry wines I am more happy with. The Concord grapes leave a bit of their color to the darker red wine but most of their influence is in the flavor of this wine. The Soft Red gives hints to a rich, smooth wine in the first breathe of a complex aroma. The wine imparts a stronger start than other semi-sweets but doesn't go very far. The flavor seems to stop on your tongue and slide around like a heavy, silk fabric that just coats your tastebuds with a teasing finish that finally ends up being whisked away at the perfect time. This is a great wine for a cool day, some crackers and a mild to moderate cheese. The Soft Red would also complement a nice picnic lunch at the beginning of fall and its cool days.

Posted by Ben at 10/12/2005 10:37:00 PM 0 comments

Wikipedia: Part 1 (General Information)

Utilimaster Corporation was founded in 1973 in Wakarusa, Indiana. Previously owned by Holiday Ramber and then Harley-Davidson, it was bought by management in 1996. Currently ISO 9001 and QS-9000 certified.

Leading competitors are Morgan Olson (formerly Grummon Olson) and Union City Body Company.

Utilimaster is the leading provider of customized Parcel Delivery Vans (PDVs), Walk-in vans (also known as step vans), and truck bodies. Customers include FedEx, United States Postal Service, UPS, Canada Post, Purolator, Airborne, Budget, Penske, Ryder TRS, Frito-Lay, Keebler, Krispy Kreme, IBC, Cintas, AmeriPride, Verizon, Apria Health Care, and Home Depot.

Posted by Ben at 10/12/2005 04:24:00 PM 0 comments

How to Score...

Wine should be enjoyed. But the difficulty can be in deciding which wine will match your palette the best. I've said before that price doesn't always equal quality. However, often it is difficult to dig deep enough in a wine to find the best bottle. Do you want the 2004 or the 2003? Was 2001 a bad year for southern Michigan wineries?

Welcome to the Robert Parker method. It is loved and hated for very valid reasons. Scoring a wine (on a scale of up to 100, higher being better) can be an easy way for the uneducated to glance and buy. However, scoring can be arbitrary and less informative than some may wish. A Merlot with a 92 is still a dry wine and the lover of sweets is still going to prefer the Muscat with an 85.

A bit of knowledge backing the consumer can turn the scored wine into a quick reference that can help foster a confidence in purchases. If the wine shop you frequent doesn't provide that information, consult the workers or a website that allows for a search with a return of a tidbit of info on what you're looking for in terms of a winery or vintage.

Posted by Ben at 10/11/2005 10:52:00 PM 0 comments

The Wine Drinker's Education

Alder Yarrow wrote a great piece in his monthly column at Gastronomic Meditations about the 5 stages of the wine drinker's education:

STAGE 1: Red, White, Pink, or Bubbles
STAGE 2: Varietal Schmarietal
STAGE 3: Distinctions
STAGE 4: Depth

• Vocabulary
• Winemaking
• Wine regions
• Components of taste and aroma
• Deliberate pairing of wine and food

STAGE 5: Connoisseurship

So, give it a look. The article does a very thorough job of setting up a plan for a person to systematically increase their education in a well planned way.

Posted by Ben at 10/11/2005 10:34:00 PM 0 comments

¿De dónde es su vino?

90% likely that if you're drinking American, you're drinking Californian.

The $45 billion industry for California is the 900-pound gorilla that has generally overpowered the rest of the nation in terms of small wineries getting known to the public. I have repeatedly shared my love for Oliver Winery in past posts. There are many others in the US, but they are hard to identify quickly. The east coast is coming out strongly with some good Savignon Blancs but it has been largely ignored by the media.

It is a good idea to broaden horizons and look for the little guys. Like microbrews, the smaller, local wineries can be great tastes at extremely good value. Go on a visit to the local wine shop and look at their non-Californian US wines. They should have the different localities labeled and an employee should be able to help you out.

Posted by Ben at 10/11/2005 08:26:00 PM 0 comments

Wine for Midus

6 years ago, The Economist had a great article on very expensive wine. Not so much on what makes a wine justify a $100+ price tag, but instead, what purpose the marked-up wine serves to the wine community and to the casual wine folks.

During the mid-1980s and 90s, the south-asian wine economy was on a rocket to the moon. Wine parties were extremely fashionable and they were drinking the big five wines as listed in an 1855 classification of wines (Lafite, Margaux, Latour and Haut-Brion). Mouton-Rothschild, a fifth name, was added in 1973. These were the wines to be seen drinking and others fell the side as prices rose to unprecedented levels.

The American response was to drive prices and demand up. However, when demand had create a vacuum of applicable wines, wineries began to release "rare" wines. The American wineries made smaller batches that they declared were reserve vintages. These were bottled specially and sold at a higher than market price. This was a niche market that was fueled by a worldwide desire for expensive wines at a time that the quality of good and poor wines were becoming closer than they had in the past.

Currently, the notion of fine wines being the most expensive is slowly losing steam. However, reserve batches still exist alongside very good <$20 bottles. The expensive wines still have the possibility of being very bad; especially those wines that are old. A poorly stored 150 year old bottle will most certainly taste like a 150 year old bottle of dirty vinegar or worse. Buyer beware, the party would possibly be better for $20 for wine and $5000+ for entertainment than $20 of cheese with a large quantity of liquid filth.

Posted by Ben at 10/11/2005 07:46:00 PM 0 comments

Bottleneck

It seems that I have fallen victim to putting all my posts from the last week into my draft status bin because I didn't think they were quite ready. In other news, I've had no posts for a week.

I have been doing a bit of searching and reading and have decided that I will write my wiki on Utilimaster Corp., which is where I am employed. I may also be able to get some good information from our Marketing folks to put on there too.

Speaking of wiki, there was an interesting article on Slashdot about the vulnerabilities of the wiki structure. Informative reading if you are so inclined (it's short but with lots of links to longer documents).

Finally, I tried 4 different wines this past weekend, there was a great article on types of wine drinkers and some very educational material on Californian wine that I want to share with everyone. Keep checking in the next 72 hours for lots of new content (which I may backdate to when I originally created the drafts).

Posted by Ben at 10/10/2005 04:56:00 PM 0 comments

Blogging Emo

If you want to share in the emotional port-a-potty of the internet, you might want to check out group hug. It is a mixture between confessional and something else that I can't put my finger on. It should be applauded for it's ability to allow us to all spill our guts and not feel nervous about recognition. However, it does tend to not be family friendly. Or, for that matter, friendly to anyone who is offended by things that aren't pretty or happy. There are no Care Bears here people.

The styles used are from proper to E.E. Cummings-type and yet the styles also add their own part to the unleashed feel of the site. As a blog it's not really all that good of an example other than the fact that there are regular postings, they seem to follow a loose theme of confession, and they don't really allow a one-on-one conversation that would lead us to classify it as a forum (though one of those exists at the site too).

Posted by Ben at 10/06/2005 12:11:00 AM 0 comments

5 Step Program

Alder has again posted an interesting bit of info. This time he connects us, loyal reader, to a post by Napa resident, Dan Berger, concerning the 5 types of wine that are out there. It makes for handy reading and classification of what we drink from boxes to incredibly expensive bottles that are saved for promotions and christning. So, head over and check it out. It is very well written and is also quite concise for the topic matter.

By the way, Alder's promised some similar info on the classification of wine drinkers later this week too...

Posted by Ben at 10/02/2005 10:58:00 PM 0 comments