My last Blogger post, but not my last SAZ in the Cellar post!

After 18 months of using Blogger, I have decided to switch over to Wordpress.  This decision was based primarily on the ability to easily build out a more proper website.  It will continue to be used for blogging, but also used to start describing and promoting my upcoming wine book.  I can also easily create additional web pages to provide links to anything and everything wine-like.  The blog is stilled called SAZ in the Cellar, but just has a new URL.

All Blogger posts have been imported into Wordpress and still available!  However, the internal links to other previous posts still point to Blogger, so I will keep Blogger reference-able until all links are changed.

I am very excited about both my upcoming book and the capabilities provided within Wordpress.  Using Wordpress should allow me to significantly grow the usefulness of SAZ in the Cellar.  For regular updates, please also like my Facebook SAZ in the Cellar page.  And the book, Wine Sense(s) should be available around the end of 2013 or very early 2014.

I am integrating my wine and writing brand into SAZ in the Cellar to make it easy for you to follow and continue to partake in the wonderful world of wine with me!

Thanks to all of you for your tremendous support and to Google Blogger for making it possible.  We had over 33,000 page views since launching about 18 months ago.  But it is time to expand and do many new things.  And Wordpress provides a brand new vintage for doing that!


Steve Shipley
SAZ in the Cellar Wordpress website:  http://sazinthecellar.com/
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

What Wine with Truffle?

We have been on a bit of a truffle kick the last few weeks, even posting a vlog on making scrambled eggs with truffle.  And last night, my loved one, DAZ in the Kitchen, made a great pasta dish with chicken, cream, and a mushroom and truffle paste.  It was delicious and will be posted in Daz in the Kitchen soon.

Truffles

Both mushroom and truffle have strong umami mouth taste and feel.  Jeannie Choo Lee, Master of Wine (MW), and expert in Asian haute cuisine (and everyday Asian food fare!) in her book Asian Palate: Savoring Asian Cuisine and Wine, explains umami as follows:

"Umami is a Japanese term that is widely acknowledged to be the fifth taste, the others being salty, sour, bitter and sweet.  It was identified by Professor Kikunae Ikeda at Tokyo Imperial University over 100 years ago. as amino acid glutamate (aka glutamic acid) and later confirmed by research as a type of amino acid that is detectable by tongue receptors.  Rather than having its own recognizable flavor, umami is subtle and expands, creates depth and rounds out other flavors.  It occurs naturally in foods such as seaweed, mushrooms, soy sauce and aged cheese."

She also recommends a full body, aged white wine such as Chardonnay or Semillon to compliment and enhance umami flavors.  We had a 2006 Penfolds Yatarnna in the fridge, pulled it out, matched it up against the pasta and it was a perfect combination!  I love a big, aged Chardonnay with cream sauce and mushrooms and the heightened and enhanced flavors derived from the truffle only added to the flavor (to the point of satiation!).  The meal was magic.

We have used truffle to enhance scrambled eggs as shown in the video and also in quiche.  (If using 100% real truffle, you only need a very small amount which is good because it is expensive!)  With the eggs and possibly some cheese in an omelet or quiche, I would recommend an aged Semillon instead of a Chardonnay.

If you have not tried real truffle, you should!  If you cannot bring yourself to pay the price for real truffle, you can use a truffle flavored oil instead, but there is a drop-off in taste.  With half a teaspoon of truffle added to our scrambled eggs, the finish on the truffle lasted hours on our palate.  It is an amazing ingredient to add to many meals.  And if you are looking for a wine to go with truffle, a big, aged white Chardonnay or Semillon is the way to go.


Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

Blogging or Booking?

Many people have asked why I have not been releasing as many blog posts in the last few months.  I used to post about 10 - 15 per month, but have only posted twice now in the last month.  I apologize for that and need to get more diligent.  But there is good cause as I have been very focused on getting my first wine book published.  This has been a far larger effort than my previous book Still Stupid at Sixty which I wrote under the pseudonym, Blake Stevens.  It was a great experience and I learned a lot about the electronic publishing industry.  But that was a tale that I needed to write, not a book that I hope influences a much larger audience.

I have written about 300 pages so far and expect the wine book will end up between 350 - 375 pages.  I am putting a heavy-duty effort into finalizing my research and restructuring the book to make it more readable and accessible.  I am really excited about the book and hope it reaches a wide audience that will enjoy and benefit from it.  My last book was only published in electronic format and limited to Kindle mobi format (which has about 90% of sales for authors electronically).  My wine book will be published both electronically (in a number of different formats) and in printed form and will have a number of photographs.  It will also have video links using QR Codes.  The photography and video components adds a great deal of work to the effort, but is well worth it.

My last book was a personal tale so I did not need to do any research or citation of references.  My wine book will have a substantial bibliography and set of footnotes and endnotes.  This is another dimension of why the wine book requires much more effort than my first book did.

Note taking in Evernote

I had been writing the book in Word, but have now converted the Work In Process (WIP) to Scrivener which is an authoring management system.  I am also using Evernote for collecting research and clipping notes.  Both are brilliant applications which have really increased my productivity.  I review my sources, enter comments into Evernote on my iPad (see picture), then cut and paste into the correct section in Scrivener.  This has really helped me to improve the organization and structure of the book.  It has also provided me a vehicle to do much more electronically instead of working with paper to-do lists and a multitude of different files, notebooks, Post-It tabs, margin writing, etc. Additionally, I am learning HTML and CSS to be able to better understand and control the final output of the books even though I will have a professional designer work with me to accomplish that.

However, all of the book writing and coming up to speed with new applications (great as they are!) on top of working a full-time job has limited my desire and ability to blog, and for that I apologize.  I am flattered that a number of people have been querying my whereabouts and look forward to my posts!  And I want to let you know that I will be blogging much more over the next month again.  I will do limited writing on my wine book, but much reading and research and restructuring of the book before I get into doing a significant rewrite in about four to six weeks time.  This will leave more energy over the next month for blogging.  Plus I will extract a number of the basic concepts from the book and use those to create blog posts and to start to introduce you to the book.

Thank you so much for your support!  I really appreciate it and hope you will become as interested in my wine book as you are my wine blog.  I will release some 'teasers' along the way as each section of the book is further developed.

We had a tremendous time in the Hunter Valley, meeting with some wine makers and cellar door friends, and also meeting some new great chefs around the region.  It was so wonderful to have two solid weeks of vacation to do a major restructuring of the wine book, but my blogging has suffered due to my dedication and focus to the book.  I will try to keep both better balanced while I am finishing off the book.  I promise each of my three blogs will receive more attention.

Thanks again for your support and interest, and keep drinking well!


Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

Magnificent Meal with McLeish Wines

We are spending two weeks in the Hunter Valley and really enjoying it.  We have taken the opportunity to cook every meal so far and have plans to cook most of our meals while here.  However, we are excited to participate in two McLeish Estate wine tastings.  The first one was this evening at Two Naughty Chooks Restaurant and Wine Bar at 130 John Street, Singleton, NSW and the other will be tomorrow evening at Paymasters Cafe in Newcastle.  Both are hosted by McLeish Estate wines.

Brook and Wayne Dermody are the husband and wife team and co-chefs at Two Naughty Chooks Restaurant and Wine Bar.  The food truly caught us by surprise - it was magnificent!  And working together with Jessica McLeish of McLeish Wines, we had a perfect pairing of food and wine.  We also bought some real truffles and other truffle-related products.  (Tomorrow morning for breakfast we will be having scrambled eggs with truffles - yum!)

Bob and Maryanne McLeish have been working the vineyard since 1985, and all grapes are sourced from their own vineyards.  They have a premium parcel of land between Broke Road and De Beyers Road and the quality of their grapes shows in the quality of their wines.  Their daughter, Jessica, is part of the wine making team along with Andrew Thomas, one of Australia's best known winemakers.  The McLeish family and Andrew Thomas make a formidable team and I am certainly interested in trying more of their wines year-in and year-out.

We started the evening drinking a Sparkling Chardonnay and a Sparkling Shiraz with an assortment of great canapes.  Then we sat down for a four-course degustation with perfectly matching wines.  The first course was a Jerusalem artichoke soup with scallop, bacon, Hazelnuts and crispy artichoke.  We drank a 2013 McLeish Estate Semillon (bottled only four weeks prior) and the 2009 McLeish Estate Semillon.  Both wines went extremely well with the soup.  The 2013 Semillon was fresh and very alive on the palate, with citrus and pineapple flavors, while the 2009 Semillon possessed a smoother mouth feel and was more integrated and balanced due to its maturity.

Jessica describing the Semillons

We then had the Confit chicken with mushroom and truffle.  Among so many other great foods during the evening, it is impossible to pick out a standout dish, but if one had to chose, this would be it.  And the matching wine was the 2009 McLeish Estate Reserve Chardonnay.  This was also the stand-out wine of the evening and we are swinging by McLeish Estate in the next several days to get a dozen or so bottles.  The 2009 McLeish Estate Reserve Chardonnay drank like a Montrachet.  It had a mineral, wet stone taste representative of Chassagne Montrachet and lemon flavors.  It also still had a good amount of acid and should cellar and improve with age over the next decade or so.

The main course was beef cheeks with celeriac, broad beans, pickled cabbage and Enoki mushrooms with a matching 2010 McLeish Estate Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.  The bouquet was amazing. This wine was drinkable now, with big fruity, jammy flavors, tasting of blackberries.  It was alive on the palate.  This drink was surprisingly good for a Hunter Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.

We also had the 2010 McLeish Estate Shiraz and the 2009 McLeish Estate Jessica Botytis Semillon with an assortment of desserts.    The Shiraz was big and both fruity and spicy, typical of a Hunter Valley Shiraz.  It possessed boysenberry and plum flavors.

While both red wines were very drinkable today, the Cabernet Sauvignon and the Shiraz had decent tannins and I am certain each wine will improve significantly over time.  You should buy some now to sit down in the cellar for a few years!  And the 2009 Jessica was luscious, with a creamy, yet refined mouth feel.  It had both melon and honey flavors and was a bit sweet, but not too sweet.

The evening overall was magical with a great crowd, great chefs, food and service and of course, great wines.  Jessica McLeish is typical of someone in the Australian wine industry in that she is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about her wine, yet is one of the friendliest people around and willing to share her knowledge with anyone else who is interested (like me!).

And to think we get to repeat the experience (with a different line-up of McLeish Estate wines) tomorrow again at Paymasters Cafe.  Looking forward to it!  Then back to cooking on our own!


Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
Pinterest Boards: Wine Humor, Wine Labels, Wine Paraphernalia
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

Gustatory Travel Experiences!

I am about 90% complete in writing the initial draft of my wine book entitled Wine Sense(s), and am excited to start sharing some extracts with you.  Today I am featuring how to indulge in culinary excursions to further your wine education.  One reason for featuring this topic is that it provides a fun way to learn more about food and wine.  Another is that the proprietor, On the Road Culinary Adventures, is offering an upcoming 10-day Mediterranean culinary cruise which looks fantastic, so if you are looking to get away for a few weeks this September, you should check this out. 

This section is extracted from Part 4: Where to Next?, Chapter 19:  Further Wine Education, under the section Guided Gustatory Tours.  (Please note that this is draft material and may contain grammatical and other errors.)

Guided Gustatory Tours

Continued reading and research using the resources described above provides an ongoing improvement in our cognitive wine knowledge which is critical to improving wine drinking enjoyment and appreciation.  But that on its own is not pleasurable unless you actually do some wine drinking along the way!

Earlier in the book, we discussed a number of different methods to gain wine drinking experience as part of our everyday existence.  But there exist some other avenues for concentrated and intensive wine education which comprises eating and drinking great wines in great locations.  More and more food and wine tours are being organized to provide ‘extreme’ gustatory experiences embodied as vacations.  These can be in duration from several days to several weeks or longer.  They usually involve traveling to a place relevant to the food and wine that will be discussed and consumed.  Many occur in exotic places such as Tuscany or Provence or take place on cruise ships featuring ‘intensive’ cooking or wine tasting courses that are great fun and great education.

While you can select your own destinations and visit different wineries and partake in different tasting experiences, having an expert aware of the region, its food and wine styles, and with access to the best venues and instructors can be a real help; both in terms of what you learn and how enjoyable it is.  You can query online or visit a travel agent find out more about these types of wine educational tours and vacations to start to search for and plan available options.

I am not going to provide links or names as I am more familiar with the growth of this concept for ‘extreme gustatory vacations’ than I am knowledgeable with the increasing number of providers in this space.  You can easily find out more by looking online or talking with a travel agent.  However, I will use one provider I am familiar with and can recommend to illustrate the services and options available.  On theRoad Culinary Adventures (www.ontheroadculinaryadventures.com/) combines a love of food and wine with a love of travel to provide culinary travel adventures.  These include several-day events hosted in the US and longer overseas trips, including cruises. 

On the Road Culinary Adventures combine a relaxing vacation experience which focuses on teaching you more about food and wine through providing a tremendous culinary experience complimented by increasing your cognitive knowledge through lectures, instruction by guest chefs, and a hands-on teaching experience where you are preparing the food and the meals under the tutelage of culinary experts.  I know the owners from having worked together with them in the corporate world, and know they have exquisite taste and knowledge when it comes to food and wine and a passion to share that with others.

Gustatory vacations can provide intense and in-depth experiences in a relaxing environment.  You should come back from this type of experience with deeper knowledge and increased abilities to recreate similar events at home and share with friends.  A gustatory vacation also increases your visibility of what is possible and heightens your expectations of how to be involved and even host similar events in the future.

Visit the fish market with the Executive Chef of the Quest in Kusadasi, Turkey followed by a cooking demo with lunch

Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
Pinterest Boards: Wine Humor, Wine Labels, Wine Paraphernalia
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

The jury is in on Shiraz with pork!

Many of you are aware of my recent experiment of having an elegant Shiraz with a pork fillet, mash, gravy and vegetables the other evening.  The meal on its own was magnificent and so was the wine.  The combination of the two together was adequate, but not perfect.  The 15 year-old Shiraz was made in a less heavy style than many other Shiraz' and had soften quite a bit with time.  Yet, it was still too powerful and overwhelming for the pork.  I love to co-mingle perfectly matched food and wine, but the Shiraz over-powered the food in this case.  I needed to take several minutes of palate resting between bites of food and sips of wine to really enjoy both on their own.

So in the case of a good pork fillet in the future, it will be back to Pinot Noir for the most part.  However, I was reminded by RAP (a blog viewer and commenter), that another beautifully styled wine to match up with pork is a GSM blend.  GSM is common wine terminology for Grenache, Shiraz, and Mouvredre (often called Mataro also).  This blend works beautifully with pork, and I have even written about this as a possibility previously.  This was a superb suggestion RAP!  The GSM blend is softer and more of an old world style that works well with a pork fillet.  There is a lot going on in this blend and it is quite complex in terms of the primary and secondary flavors coming through.  Yet, it does not overpower pork.

Another mate suggested that if a meal does not match well with the 1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9 Shiraz, well then just throw out the meal!  This may be a bit extreme, but he does have something in the Vat 9 being a meal on its own!

After the meal, I did indulge in a couple of pieces of Lindt Chili Chocolate which does match perfectly with Shiraz.  The chili infusion in the chocolate provides some power to match the power of a good Shiraz.  So it was a very good evening of food eating and wine drinking, but in the future, it will be even better by drinking a Pinot Noir or GSM when serving pork.


Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9 Shiraz - will it work with pork?!

I am experimenting this evening by opening a Shiraz to go with pork fillet, mash, vegetables and gravy.  Usually I would play it safe and go with a good Pinot Noir for this meal.  It is difficult to find a much better food / wine matching combination than a Pinot Noir with pork!

But I really wanted to try another bottle of the 1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9 as it is a superb wine and at 15 years of age, I needed to check it out to make sure (that's my excuse and I am sticking to it!) it will cellar for a while yet as I have about a ten bottles left.  I don't want to wait too long, but I do want to pace drinking this wine over the next several years or longer if I can.  I would hate to wait too long and have it go off, as it is drinking very well now, but I am hoping to make it last as long as I can.

I have a great deal of respect for James Halliday and subscribe to his wine service.  But he missed the mark when evaluating this wine as he gave it an 86/100 and said to drink it by 2008.  This wine is still very big, yet elegant, with lively fruit, tasting of blackberry with light overtones of spice and leather.  It is well integrated, and nicely balanced with strong tannins.  The finish is moderate to long, and you can feel the accumulated tannins on the inside of your cheeks for a long time.  This is an excellent wine, regardless of how Halliday and others scored it.

I had this wine as one of my three red wines at my 58th birthday party over two years ago.  This was the first red, followed by the 2001 Yalumba Octavius Shiraz and the 1981 Penfolds Grange.  All three red wines were spectacular, but the 1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9 got the consensus vote for the best red wine of the evening.  It could be that it was the sequencing and by the time we drank the 1981 Penfolds Grange, we were over-satiated.  Or it could be that the 1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9 is just that good!

So why is having a Shiraz a risk with pork?  It is because a Hunter Valley (and many other) Shiraz' are heavier and spicier than most Pinot Noirs and could overwhelm the pork and side dishes.  But the 1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9 is an elegant, more refined Shiraz than many others.  I know it will be fine with the pork dinner and wanted to see if it works to provide some variety from always using a Pinot Noir with pork.  If not, I will go back to Pinot Noir!  But if you don't try, you will never know!

I have also had this wine with spaghetti and it worked very well.  My wife, DAZ in the Kitchen, makes a very fine and spicy spaghetti and the 1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9 matched up extremely well with it.  This is a versatile Shiraz!  Andrew Thomas made this wine while still at Tyrrell's and I remember talking to Andrew about it several years ago and the fond memories he had for this particular vintage.

On its own, this is a great wine (I know as I am on my second glass while writing this) and it should be fine with the meal.  I will let you know in a follow-up blog post how it works with the pork.  And once I finish off the last of my 1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9, I will move onto the 2007 Tyrrells' Vat 9.  In fact, I will probably try my first bottle this weekend or next to see how it goes.  Halliday rated the 2007 Vat 9 at 95/100 and drinkable until 2025.  Campbell Mattinson rated it 96/100 and as one of the best reds released in 2010/11. This must be an amazing wine!  But for now, I am drinking the 1998 and greatly enjoying it. 


Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

1999 Penfolds St Henri - wow, what a red!

This is one of my all-time favorite red wines.  I started drinking it almost a decade ago and it was great then, and is even better now.  This wine has a few more years before it starts to fade, but I only have two more bottles left, so not a worry.  But if you have some of it in your cellar, you should drink it soon, at least in the next three years.

I had a funny introduction to this wine the first time.  I was in Dallas in 2004 on a business trip with some very senior banking executives and trying to a very large IT contract extension.  There were eight of us eating at a fancy steak house as you can only find in Dallas!  One of my team was a Frenchman, so the client asked him to order some fine wine.  Well this particular Frenchman did not do a very good job ordering the first bottle, and I looked at the one of the key client's face when he took a sip and could tell he was not happy with the wine.  I took the wine list and while not familiar with the Penfolds St Henri of any vintage at the time, I figured a Penfolds red in this price range would be a pretty good wine without me spending several times as much for a Penfolds Magill Estate or RWT.  I ordered a bottle, could tell the client thought I had made a great choice (the smile and thumbs up were evidence enough!), and subtly pushed the bottle the Frenchman ordered down to the other end of the table to be consumed.  And six bottles of 1999 Penfolds St Henri later, we left the restaurant very happy!

I then introduced my wife, DAZ in the Kitchen, to this particular wine about a year later when I found it on the wine list at a restaurant in Sydney.  She loved it and it continued to be a favorite choice for a few years when eating out during the mid-2000s.  And upon returning from Qatar in 2009, we bought some to keep in the cellar as you could no longer find it in restaurants.  This weekend is our 12th wedding anniversary, so we are celebrating by opening one of our last bottles and enjoying tonight and tomorrow night (if there is any left!).

This is not the best vintage, but still an excellent vintage.  The 1996 vintage would have been slightly better and also will last another decade longer, so if you read this review and want to secure some St Henri, either buy the 1999 and drink it soon, or buy some of the 1996 or 1998 which you can drink now and lay some down for later.

The1999 Penfolds St Henri is a lively, fruity wine with blackberry, boysenberry and tart plum flavors.  It also has a lot of spice and goes extremely well with chili infused dark chocolate.  I know that from previous wine / chocolate matching events, but more importantly I know that as my mouth is currently filled with this wine after eating a square of the Lindt Chili dark chocolate!  Wow - what a combination!

The wine also has big tannins and is moderately heavy on the palate.  It is 14% alcohol, but certainly not over the top.  It is a complex wine with a lot of nuance.  It has the mouth feel and slight odor of wet leather.  The finish lasts a long, long time.

We will be making a rice with seared beef dish tonight to have with the wine, but frankly, we will probably finish off the bottle before dinner.  We are two-thirds the way through it already.  It just goes down so easily!

James Halliday has mentioned that compared to the Penfolds Grange, that the St Henri is certainly under-valued given what a great wine it is.  This is a perfect example of wine economics.  I would always take eight or nine bottles of the current vintage St Henri over one Penfolds Grange and that is the current exchange rate between the two wines.  Frankly, it's a no-brainer to go with many bottles of St Henri over Grange.

I will finish this post the same way I started it:   wow, what a red!


Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

Red wines from secondary grapes to be discussed on Food in Focus with Natascha Moy!

I once again have the privilege of being a guest on Natascha's great food and wine show, Food in Focus.  It will be on Saturday, 18 May at 4 pm Sydney time.  If you are dialing (does anyone truly have a dial on their radio anymore?) in, it is 89.7 FM in Sydney, Australia or can be found and heard over the Internet as Food in Focus.

Natascha is always great fun and mixes it up well.  The first time I was on the show, we talked about party wines.  The next time, we sampled and discussed Rieslings.  This time we are going to be discussing wines made from secondary red wine grapes.  The four primary red wine grapes are:

• Cabernet Sauvignon
• Shiraz
• Merlot
• Pinot Noir

A majority of red wine is made from these primary grape sources.  Yet, I have fallen in love with the different mouth feel, textures and variety of the so-called secondary grapes.  They are only secondary when referring to the volume of grapes sold as wine.  They make some great, great wines.  Examples of secondary wine grapes include:

• Sangiovese
• Zinfandel
• Tempranillo
• Durif
• Barbero
• Grenache (is considered by some to be a primary red wine grape)
• ... and many more!

There might be over 1,000 different wine grapes now.  What I love about the secondary grapes is that they have real character and sense of terroir.  They uniquely reflect the region where they are grown, more so than primary red grapes.  The primary grapes have been replanted so many times and so far around the world and have been groomed to reflect the strength of the varietal.  Secondary grapes have far more diversity and different characteristics based on where they are grown.  This is not to say that primary red wine grapes do not reflect their terrior - they certainly do.  And they make some great wines.  But the secondary red wine grapes make wines which are all over the place, picking up the local climatic and soil traits and the influence of various wine makers not yet familiar with the grape, and therefore, can sometimes take on unique characteristics which make then truly special.

I am not sure exactly what bottles I will be bringing tomorrow.  I am still figuring that out this evening and tomorrow morning.  But as always, it should be a great show.  Tune in if you can!


Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

Vavasour Pinot Gris with Zucchini Soup

As we move into the winter months Down Under (yes, mate, Australia is where I am writing this from!), my wife, DAZ in the Kitchen, and I enjoy making more soups for dinner.  We try a variety of soup recipes and have had some spectacular soups from Sibel Hodge's A Gluten Free Soup Opera which provides gluten-free soup recipes which are easy to make, flavorful and healthy.  Sibel's soup recipes are powerful and flavorful with chick peas, lentils and a lot of different spices.

We also like to make creamy vegetable soups such as pumpkin, broccoli, cauliflower and others.  Recently, we were the benefactors of a 2.5 Kg zucchini and had to figure out what to do with it!  We made a lot of zucchini bread muffins (see recipe in last DAZ in the Kitchen post) and a lot of zucchini soup (recipe has not yet, but will be, published soon in DAZ in the Kitchen).  In fact, we had so much zucchini soup, we ended up freezing several servings.  And tonight we are taking two servings out of the freezer for dinner.

I have tried Riesling with creamy vegetable soups and I have also tried Verdelho.  Both work.  However, many Verdelhos are too soft and tepid and many Rieslings are too acidic.  I have found for my taste, I like a Pinot Gris with a creamy vegetable soup (other than tomato).  A young Pinot Gris still has a bit of acid and slight metallic diesel and mild citrus edge to match up well with the vegetables, but also a soft mouth feel to go with the creaminess.  The 2010 Vavasour Pinot Gris is such a wine.

This is a great wine for the money.  We paid $15 per bottle for this.  It is a New Zealand Pinot Gris from the Marlborough region.  It has pear, apple and grapefruit flavors.  The wine is surprisingly well balanced and integrated for such a young wine.  I love the mouth feel and tannins that provide a puckering on the inside of my cheeks.  I would call it off-dry or juicy dry.

This wine is great value for the money and it goes beautifully with creamy vegetables soups.  It has consistently been rate 93/100 or 94/100.  This wine will not cellar for more than a couple of years.  It is drinkable immediately and drinking very well now.  The 2011 is also rated very high and much more available than the 2010.

Some of the Italian Pinot Gris I have tried are a bit more elegant, but also much more expensive.  They go well with a variety of food choices.  But if you are making a simple creamy vegetable soup and possibly having a bread roll to go with it, a New Zealand Pinot Gris like the 2010 Vavasour will do the trick nicely.

Steve Shipley

Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

Storing wine once the bottle has been opened

Opening a bottle of wine changes its taste dramatically over a few hours and accelerates in next day or two exponentially.  This is due to massively more air that the wine comes in contact with after opening as compared to the very little it has experienced while sealed and laid down in the cellar.

During the time in the bottle, only about 5 - 10 ml of air space exists in a 750 ml bottle of wine for the wine to mature by interacting with the air.  With cork, a few more ml seeps through each year (through evaporation of wine) to continue to help the wine mature.  If there is a cork problem, though, and a lot of air is leaking into the bottle, the wine will mature far too quickly and not be drinkable.  For this same reason, once opened and exposed to much more air, the bottle will become undrinkable after a few days.

Unless you are going to drink the entire bottle over several hours, you need to concern yourself with preventing as much air as possible from interacting with the wine to decelerate the ruin of the wine.  There are several ways of doing this: 

• Stick the original cork back in to stopper the wine bottle (keeps wine good for about 1 – to 1.5 days) 
• Use a simple consumer manual rubber stopper and vacuum pump set to extract excess air from the bottle (keeps wine good for 2 – 3 days) 
• Use a commercial pump and storage 2-bottle set (keeps wine good for 4 – 6 days) 
•  Use a carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and argon gas replacement system  that is completely closed sealed (keeps wine good for up to 2 – 3 weeks)

After decanting wine for the right period of time, it is important to get the wine back into a bottle and stopper it as soon as possible.  While several minutes to several hours (in most cases) of decanting will improve the wine, anything after that will only help the wine deteriorate and turn into vinegar.  To slow this process down to ensure you can finish the bottle of wine prior to it going off, you need to minimize its interaction with air to the least amount of time possible.

Every time you open the bottle again to pour another glass, you are letting new air into the bottle, and as the bottle of wine empties, the amount of new air introduced increases, which quickens the pace of deterioration.  Therefore, it is important to stopper the bottle immediately again once you have finished pouring to minimize any excess air in the bottle.  This is why vacuuming the air out and replacing it with a gaseous blend is the most effective way to keep wine fresh for several weeks.

If the cork is still intact or you still have the screw top after opening the bottle, you can use it to stopper the wine.  While there is no expense to this method, the wine will worsen overnight and not be as drinkable the following day, or at least certainly not drinkable by the second day following opening.  If the bottle has been left half empty overnight, you have introduced a lot of new air into the wine which will quickly deteriorate it.  This approach can be used successfully for keeping a bottle of wine fresh for several hours or maybe from afternoon until evening, but I never would use it to store a half-empty bottle overnight.  I use this approach when I have decanted a fine wine for several hours, then re-bottle it to bring to a restaurant within the next hour or so.

The most cost effective way to store wine and keep it drinkable for one or two more days is to use a vacuum pump and cork set.  These tend to cost around $20 - $25 for a pump and a few stoppers and you can buy more stoppers if required.  This uses a special artificial stopper with small holes and one-way openings.  The pump is used to extract as much air as possible and create a vacuum in the bottle.  This significantly reduces the amount of air in contact with the wine and slows the deterioration process, extending the life of the wine by another day or two.

I have a vacuum pump set and have found this to be great value.  For only $20 - $25, you will save many quarter- to half-bottles of wine for another day and over time this can mean keeping thousands of dollars of wine drinkable.  Since it is just my wife and I usually at home for dinner, we may not drink more than a half bottle or little more during any evening.  We will usually have two or three bottles opened at a time, as our mood changes or as we have a snack or meal.  Using the vacuum pump and stopper method keeps several bottles fresh and available to provide us with good choice.

Additionally, when we have larger dinner parties, we will have eight or ten bottles of wine we want to serve upon arrival, with each food course, and for after dinner.  But you are never sure how many people are going to be drinking (one night a friend who we did not know was pregnant was not drinking, for example), and we may have already decanted several of the finer wines, so we might have three or four partial bottles left over at the end of the night.  By using this vacuum pump, we can then keep and drink the partial bottles over the next few days.

The vacuum pump set is a great option for the money.  However, the technology is more limited than with the next higher up commercial model.  Sometimes the rubber stopper seal will be nudged (possibly even upon removal of the pump) and let air re-enter into the bottle.  (You can tell if this has occurred when you open the bottle and there is no popping of the vacuum.  If there is a definite vacuum breakage popping sound, then you know it was sealed properly.)  If this occurs, you should make sure to drink the rest of the wine right away, or you risk it going bad over another day.  If the seal has remained intact, you may be able to get another day of good drinking from the wine.  Unfortunately, there is really nothing you can do to determine if the seal is intact or not until you open it again.  I just try to be very careful to remove the pump from the stopper after pumping by lifting it straight up.  But the seal also may break sometime during the night based on the opening of the bottle.  Based on bottle type, there may be some small differences in the diameter of the bottle opening, causing the seal to be more fragile for wider bottle openings than for narrower ones.  Additionally, if there is some residual wine liquid on the neck where the stopper has been inserted, then there may be some slippage and the seal could break.

The next day or day after, you will have noticed some changes in the taste of the wine.  It is usually smoother (which can be a pleasant improvement if it was tight when you opened it), but you have usually lost some of the grape fullness of flavor.  Therefore, the wine might taste slightly less robust.  After a couple of days, it may even taste ‘dead’ or totally flat using the vacuum pump method of storage.

The next higher up option for wine storage after opening the bottle comes in a small refrigerated unit that has two compartments to hold two different bottles.  Each bottle has a pumping and extraction capability and for most models, each bottle can be stored at a standard white wine or red wine temperature.  Each compartment is set separately you can either store two whites, or two reds, or one of each at the right temperature.

This more commercial option cost between $500 - $700 based on the features and technology provided, but they all work basically the same.  They also require being placed close to an electric outlet.  This technology provides a better seal and air extraction system than the manual vacuum pump which is why it provides several more days of storage without noticeable change in the quality of the wine.  I have considered buying such a system, but I have not yet, as I have very few bottles that would require five or six days of storage.  Additionally, I have not been entirely comfortable with the value point of the technology.  I expect more competition in this field, with improved quality and durability and a lower price in the near future.  I am open to buying such a system, but have not done so yet.  I keep monitoring this type of device though to see what is available and if it is coming to a value point where I am comfortable purchasing one.

The top of the line unit to store opened bottles costs several thousand dollars and can be configured to store as many bottles as you like.  They typically come in a configuration to store four bottles, but can be customized to store less or more.  Additionally, they can be provided as a counter top unit or designed to be built into the wall or cabinetry.  Wine features such as this type of storage unit plus Vintec or other manufacturer’s cellar units are now being featured as key aspects of kitchen renovations.  I love things that are very functional and very stylish and this type of system fits both characteristics!

These systems are manufactured as closed systems where a tight seal is provided for each bottle.  They typically have temperature control to be able to adjust the temperature to be suitable for a certain type of wine (sparkling versus white versus red).  They have much higher quality parts and are custom assembled to suit your needs.  I am hopeful to get such a unit someday when I have the money and also know that I will be living in that house for a long, long time.  They will allow a wine to be opened and drunk over several weeks. The reason they work so well is that they ensure air cannot creep into the space in the bottle as the air has been replaced with carbon dioxide, nitrogen and argon.  By doing so, oxidation has been reduced drastically, preserving the quality of the wine longer.

There are a number of suitable options to keep your wine as fresh as you need it once you have opened the bottle.  They come at different value points and vary based on how long you would typically need to keep bottles opened before finishing them.  The important thing is to always stopper the bottle with one method or another as soon as you can and to extract as much air as you can from the bottle.  This will slow the rate of deterioration and preserve your wine at a level enjoyable for drinking for a longer period of time.

Steve Shipley

Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

French versus American Oak - is there a winner?

I have noticed recently a bit of wine competition going on.  Of course, living in Australia and having a place in The Hunter Valley, I have my favorites and will defend them to the death.  But I am a pretty open-minded guy who loves to continue to taste new experiences and continuously learn about new and different things.

Next Friday I am going to a 'Best of USA versus Australia' wine tasting and four-course meal in Melbourne.  What a great night that will be!  Its only $150 per head and the 13 wines and food look magnificent.  If you are interested, I would love to see you there.  Contact Top Australian Wines or just order tickets online.

And this weekend, I will be watching the movie Bottle Shock, which is the 1976 competition between French and Napa Valley wines, which is entitled as it is because of the shock that the Americans came out on top.

But the focus of this blog post is the comparison between wines stored in French Oak and wines stored in American Oak.  The different is mostly two-fold in terms of the effect it has on wine.  French Oak is a tighter grain with the American Oak being courser.  And American Oak has twice to four times the amount of lactones, which provide sweeter and stronger, yet different vanilla overtones.  I had a rare opportunity to compare the exact same wine using the same grapes and from the same vintage stored in both French and American Oak, the wine being the 2008 Rothvale Chardonnay.  Both wines were magnificent!  If I remember correctly, I spent about $22 per bottle for these wines and only bought four of each.  This is the first time I have tried either one as I had been waiting for the right moment to compare both.  My bride, DAZ in the Kitchen, felt the wines would go well with a cheese platter this afternoon and also go well with the mushroom soup we are making this evening.

We sampled and greatly enjoyed both wines.  They are truly spectacular and drink like $50 - $75 bottles of Chardonnay.  Both wines have some similar characteristics:

• Exact same ingredients and stored in respective oak barrels for 9 months
• Both have a smooth mouth feel, almost velvety
• Both are bright yellow, turning golden in color
• Both are very easy to drink and of extremely high quality

Yet, there are some noticeable differences.  The 2008 Rothvale Chardonnay in French Oak was:

• More elegant and beautifully balanced
• Edgier, and slightly more acidic, more lemon citrus flavored
• Purer, subtler vanilla taste
• Taste like a typical Montrachet

Whereas the 2008 Rothvale Chardonnay in American Oak was:

• More in-your-face vanilla flavoring but courser
• Sweeter, honey-like taste plus smoked almond taste as secondary flavors
• Richer, more robust flavor overall, but not as integrated or balanced as the French Oak

I would have to give a slight nod to the 2008 Rothvale Chardonnay in French Oak as the better drinking wine today, but I am pretty certain that the 2008 Rothvale Chardonnay in American Oak will drink better in several years time.  I just hope I have a few bottles of each left by then to prove the point!  I am definitely stopping by the winery tomorrow to see if there is any of the 2008 Chardonnays left or if there is an even better vintage since where the Rothvale Chardonnay has been stored in both the French and American Oak.

I have limited experience with great Montrachets, but have certainly been drinking more of them recently and truly enjoy a great Montrachet.  I was under the impression that the characteristics of the individual Montrachets had to do with the locale and soil conditions and I have noticed the differences between a Puligny-Montrachet and a Chassagne-Montrachet.  I thought the difference characters unfolding in the wine were mostly the results of the grapes being in different locations.  But after comparing the Hunter Valley Chardonnay in both French and American Oak, I can understand how impactful the French Oak is in making any Chardonnay (of very good grapes) taste like a Montrachet.

I greatly look forward to drinking both of these wines with the mushroom soup we are making this evening to see if either goes better than the other with the soup.  Hats off to Rothvale on making great wines using both French and American Oak!


Steve Shipley

Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

Wonderful wine gift from in-laws

I suppose now that I have you reading this blog post, I could tell you the wine gift my in-laws provided was their daughter, my lovely bride, DAZ in the Kitchen, who shares in good food and wine with me.  And I do thank them every day for that gift, one which you can not put a price on (even though my father-in-law tried to during his speech at our wedding.  Something about transferring a liability from his balance sheet to mine!).

No, I am referring to a beautiful half bottle of 2002 Inniskillin Vidal VQA Ice wine from Canada.  This is a real gift.  Embarrassingly, I left it sit on the counter for six weeks before even looking at it.  I assumed it was just another dessert wine and I had a few already in the fridge and the Vintec, so I figured in due time I would get around to storing it.  There was no ceremony or exclamation of bringing me such a nice gift.  The in-laws were back from a long time overseas and we had not seen them for a while, so had them and my wife's brother and his wife over for dinner.

The in-laws came in, we shook hands and hugged, took their coats and then my mother-in-law says, "Oh yeah, here's a bottle of ice wine."  I said, "Thanks," and we left it at that and proceeded to talk about things and then sat down to dinner.  No explanation of why they decided to pick that bottle to give me or what a special bottle it is.  (I wonder if they knew?)  Therefore, I thought nothing of it and laid it down on the counter.  I figured it was a current vintage and had a screw top, but fortunately, I laid it down horizontally as a matter of course.  And a good thing I did, as it was neither a current vintage or under screw top:  It was a 2002 vintage under cork.

This morning I decided to finally do something with the bottle and that was the first time I looked at it since they gave it to me.  It was then I noticed it was a 2002 vintage and that surprised me.  I then looked at the alcoholic content (10% which is nice for a dessert wine and a good way to finish off an evening) and was high in residual sugar so I know it is going to be a sweet dessert wine.  I kept looking for the grape used wondering if it was Semillon or Riesling.  Even though the word Vidal was prominently displayed on the bottle and box, I though that was some sort of brand name, not a grape name.  However, Vidal is the name of the grape used.

Some study provided me with background on the Vidal grape.  It is a hybrid grape (Trebbiano and Rayon d'Or) with a very thick skin.  It was originally intended to be used for production of Eastern Canadian brandy.  However, it proved worthy of being used to make great Ice wine.  The grape is now grown in Eastern Canada, upper state New York around Niagara Falls, and in selected locations in the US Midwest region.

Further study showed me that this wine is difficult to source in Australia, and I can only assume my in-laws got it when in London or some other major metropolitan city around the globe.  It is an expensive bottle of wine.  The 1992 vintage is one of the very best.  I greatly look forward to drinking this bottle in the right setting and context.  This wine matches up well with several cheeses and with a pear tart or dessert with caramel sauce - I like the sound of that!  I might bring it along for one of our spectacular lunches at Bistro Molines in the Hunter Valley.  Robert (Molines) does great things with caramel and I could call ahead and ask him to make a special dessert for us.

I am gob-smacked that they gave me such a unique and special bottle of wine.  I have no idea about where they got it and why they decided to give it to me (but will now find out), but I am thankful and greatly anticipating drinking this special bottle.  I can only hope it lives up to my anticipation, but from everything I have read, it should!  Thank you, in-laws!


Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!