More Thanksgiving Wine Tips

Happy Thanksgiving from Vintage Connections!

If you have not read our Thanksgiving Wine Tips from last week, be sure to read that post as well (scroll down).

More on Nouveau Beaujolais

We tried the Nouveau Beaujolais and liked it.  No tannins, easy to drink.  We bought more. Not as dry as we usually drink, but not too sweet.  We think it is best just a little chilled because of the slight sweetness.

The 750 ml bottle is $12.99 in PA, but only $8.99 in Delaware.  (That's a tax rate of almost 50%.  Why do Pennsylvanians drive to Delaware to buy wine and other spirits?) 

The 1.5 L bottle in PA is $23.99, saving you only $1 a bottle so we don't recommend the larger bottle until after you try it and make sure you like it.  We bought two because we think all of our friends, including those who don't usually like our dry wine choices, will like it.

More on Sparklings

If you like a little sweeter sparkling and don't have time to go to Pinnacle Ridge for their Blanc de Blancs, try Domaine St. Michelle Brut or Extra Dry.  

PLCB codes for Domaine St. Michelle Brut are 4550 and 6480 for St. Michelle's  Extra Dry.  Both are $11.99 and usually easy to find.  Korbell offers a wide selection and even half bottles of a few.  They are widely available and start at $15.

Sparkling wine is categorized on a "dryness to sweetness" scale.  Naturel and Extra Brut are the driest with only a trace of residual sugar (RS) that you will NOT notice, Brut is not quite as dry and is a popular level of dryness.  The RS is not noticeable, but takes the edge of the dryness.  With Extra Dry, you'll probably taste some sweet. This is a good choice if you don't like dry wine. Demi Sec is the sweetest.

Even more about Sparkling
Blanc de Blanc is made with all white grapes, usually with a lot of Chardonnay, but not always as you read in our last newsletter about Pinnacle Ridge. 

Blanc de Noir is usually all Pinot Noir, a red grape. But since the juice is removed from the skins with a minimum of time to absorb color, Blanc de Noir is sometimes still a white wine, but often is pink like Pinnacle Ridge's Brut Rose. 

Of course, sparkling wine can be made from any grape and we have had sparkling Syrah, even thought we thought it was a bit heavy for a sparkling and won't buy it again.  When modeled after Champagne, sparklings are made with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, or some combination of them.  Adding some juice from other grapes, like in Trapiche, provides an interesting variety of sparklings to be enjoyed.

UPCOMING EVENTS (click on the highlighted links) Pottstown Hometown Holiday Celebration including our Wine Tasting Saturday, December 10 6-8 PM, $45 per person Click here for more details.

Contact us to schedule an event in your home, at your business, or for your organization.

Wine Tip of the Week - Wine for Thanksgiving Dinner Redux

Happy Thanksgiving from Vintage Connections!

Last November, we posted Wine Tips for Thanksgiving Dinner  to our Wine Friends through our Vintage Connections Wine Info newsletter last week and Vintage Connections Wine Info blog.
Since we have many new readers since November 2009, we are repeating that information below, with a few updates, including some updated wine recommendations.

Recommended for Thanksgiving - "affordable" sparklings. Sparklings add a touch of class to any Holiday.  The clean acidity, bright fruit and yeasty aromas pair well with just about everything on the Thanksgiving table. The only hold out will be the cranberry sauce and dessert. But as long as you don’t take a big bite of cranberry sauce and wash it down with a hearty swig of sparkling, things should turn out all right.

If you like your sparklings with a touch of sweetness, we recommend Blanc de Blanc from Pinnacle Ridge Winery. This wine is made from 100% Cayuga grapes, has 2.5% residual sugar, and is $14. This sparkling won a Gold Medal and was judged the Best Sparkling at the 2010 PA Farm Show.

 If you like your sparkling on the drier side, Pinnacle Ridge produces Brut Reserve, made from 100% Pinot Noir and is $18. This sparkling won a Gold Medal at the 2010 PA Wine Competition and a Silver Medal at the 2010 PA Farm Show.

Both wines, plus many more wonderful wines, are available at the winery just north of Kutztown, PA.

If you want the convenience of your local Wine and Spirits store, we've started drinking and had great feedback from others about Trapiche Sparkling Extra Brut from Mendoza, Argentina.  It is widely available in PLCB stores, produce code 7724, and is only $13.99. 

We've also recently tried and like Ehrhart Cremant D'Alsace (from the Alsace region of France).  This sparkling is available at some PLCB specialty stores, so do a product search for item number 30929 and see if a local store has a few bottles. It's a Chairman's Select and is only $14.99.  Both wine are well worth their price. 

Not a big fan of sparklings?  Then go with whites in general, especially those with higher acidity and no oak. Sauvignon Blanc or white Bordeaux/Meritage (blends usually including Sauvignon Blanc) go really well with butternut squash soup and lends a pleasant flavor to salad, turkey, stuffing (not spicy) and vegetables. If you are having a creamy vegetable try “naked” (un-oaked) chardonnay. Excellent choices also include Gerwurtztraminer and Riesling which pair well with all parts of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner except the cranberry sauce and pumpkin or butternut squash soups.

Really a fan of reds? Then you have two good choices: Pinot Noir or Beaujolais (made from the gamay grape, which is a cousin to Pinot Noir). Pinot Noir usually has more body and tannins than Beaujolais, so if you like bolder reds it may be the better choice. If you want a very light red this Thanksgiving, try Beaujolais.

The smooth fruit and low tannins of Pinot Noir and Beaujolais work well with most of the holiday servings.


Note: Nouveau Beaujolais is a variation of Beaujolais and is a freshly pressed and fermented, low tannic wine. The Wine and Spirits stores have a new supply, released on November 18th.  Georges Deboeuf's is widely available in PLCB stores for $12.99 (produce code 5877).  We are buying a bottle today and will let you know what we think early next week, in time for Thanksgiving dinner.

If you buy the French Nouveau Beaujolais, drink it soon. Without tannins or aging like other red wines, it could easily go bad by New Year's.



All for now.

Wine Tips - Joseph Drouhin Red Burgundy and Manatawny Creek Winter Warmth

Welcome to Vintage Connections Wine Info Blog and this week's Wine Tips!

Joseph Drouhin Cote de Beaune-Villages 2007

From Beaune, France, this excellent example of a French Burgundy is a medium-bodied light red wine.  It has aromas of fresh cherries and strawberries  and flavors of cherries, blueberries and a light earthiness typical of a good Pinot Noir.  

At first sip, we didn't like this wine, maybe because we are used to more fruit-forward, bolder US (and other) Pinot Noirs.  But it grew on us and we think it is a good and very affordable example of a red Burgundy.  There are surely better, more typical examples of red Burgundy available in PA, but this one is so affordable at $15 in PLCB stores that it is worth a try, even if only to taste the difference between this lighter, less fruity Pinot and what you may be used to.  PLCB code 16005.  It is certainly much better than other French Red Burgundies in this price range.








Manatawny Creek Winery Winter Warmth, NV

From Berks County, PA, near Douglassville.  This slightly sweet red wine is gently spiced and has aromas of cloves and cherries with flavors of spice, cherries and red jams.  Great chilled or warm, but we prefer it warm.  We hesitated serving a sweeter wine but thought it would pair well with lighter desserts. 

Our guests and we were happily surprised.  Only available at the winery and for a short period of time, and only $10.95.

 

Fun Fact

So here's a twist.  Submit a Fun Fact of your own and we will pick one or more to use in the following few weeks!  There will be another quiz someday!

 

 

UPCOMING EVENTS
(click on the highlighted links)

Nouveau Weekend
 November 20-21 on the Lehigh Valley Wine Trail. 

Visit Lehigh Valley wineries including Pinnacle Ridge, recently listed in Opus One, a compendium of the BEST 4,000 wineries in the world!  Brad Knapp and Pinnacle Ridge were listed as a RISING STAR, and outstanding honor!  Congratulations Brad!!

PLCB stores will release Nouveau Beajolais on November 18.  Read about Nouveau Beajolais here soon.

Pottstown Hometown Holiday Celebration
Wine Tasting, Saturday, December 10.  Time and cost TBD.

Contact us to schedule an event in your home, at your business, or for your organization.

Wine Tips - Galen Glen Gewertztraminer and Bogle Phantom

"Cheers" from Vintage Connections
Dean and Lisa Foster, Wine Educators and Consultants
 

Please send a link to this blog to your friends and family who may enjoy reading and learning about wine.



 Galen Glen Winery Gewurtztraminer 2009

This crisp, refreshing gewurtztraminer has aromas of honeysuckle and spice with delicious flavors of fresh fruits.  It is pale yellow in color and has a long and pleasant finish.  Grown in the shale soil of Galen Glen's vineyards, this wine displays a slight pleasant minerality with good balanced acidity.  There is a hint of sweet roses in the aroma.  Great when paired with spicy foods.

Located in the beautiful rolling hills near Andreas, PA, Galen Glen Winery has consistently created some excellent German style wines.  From Gruner Veltliner, a dry white wine, to their Stone Cellar Zweigelt, a dry red, there is something for everyone with the chance of trying something very different and new.  

We will be serving this excellent wine at an upcoming event in Pottstown.  It will be paired with chicken satay with peanut sauce.

A beautiful fall day at the vineyards of Galen Glen

Bogle Vineyard Phantom 2007 

This excellent dark ruby red dry wine is a blend of 53% petite sirah, 44% old vine zinfandel and 3% old vine mourvedre.  It has rich aromas of black pepper, dark red berries and spices like nutmeg and cinnamon with aromas of blackberries and blueberries.  It was aged in 1, 2 and 3 year old American oak barrels.  Alcohol content is 14% by volume. 
Located along the Sacarmento River in Clarksburg, California, Bogle Vineyards is owned and operated by members of the Bogle family who established the vineyards in 1968. 

Richly complex, it will only get better with age, but wonderful to drink now.  Great when paired with hearty foods like beef and lamb. 

 

UPCOMING EVENTS
(click on the highlighted links)

Annual soup day at Manatawny Creek Winery
Saturday, November 6th.  

Apple onion soup made and paired with Vidal Blanc, on the deck from 12-5.  

Bob Sica, a wonderful guitarist and singer, will be performing 2-5 that day. 

 

Nouveau Weekend
 November 20-21 on the Lehigh Valley Wine Trail. 

Visit Lehigh Valley wineries including Pinnacle Ridge, recently listed in Opus One, a compendium of the BEST 4,000 wineries in the world!  Brad Knapp and Pinnacle Ridge were listed as a RISING STAR, and outstanding honor!  Congratulations Brad!!

Pottstown Hometown Holiday Celebration
Wine Tasting, Saturday, December 10.  Time and cost TBD.

Fun Fact

Though Gewurtztraminer is a white wine the grapes themselves are pale rosy pink in color.

There will be another quiz someday!

Contact us to schedule an event in your home, at your business, or for your organization.

Wine of the Finger Lakes - Summary

This posting is a short summary of our week of winery visits and wine tasting in the Finger Lakes in upstate New York.

We visited 44 wineries, not even half of the total in the Finger Lakes, averaging about 8 tastes per winery, so we estimate that we tasted about 350 wines.  Most wineries limit customers to tasting 6 wines, usually for a $1-5 fee.  But often they'll allow an extra taste or two if they are not busy and if you are genuinely interested in wine and seem like you are going to buy. Often, we were offered several additional tastes.  Sometimes, we each tasted different wines and shared with each other when the pours were large enough to do so.

We bought several good examples of affordable Finger Lakes wines, some of which we thought would be interesting in our Wines of the Finger Lakes class.  However, we found that most wineries were serving and selling their 2008 vintage, which was a wet year in the Finger Lakes, often leading to lighter, thinner wines, especially reds.  We found many good examples of Riesling, the wine the Finger Lakes are famous for, as well as some good Gewertztraminers and Traminettes, and a few good Chardonnays and Sevals.  Some wineries were still serving and selling 2005, 2006, and 2007 vintages.  The 2005 and 2007 wines were good and we found a few examples of excellent reds from those vintages, especially 2007.  We also found a few unique blends.

Riesling is the signature wine of the Finger Lakes.  A few years ago, most Rieslings were made to be semi-sweet and sweet, but as wine drinkers have matured and drier wines have become more marketable, many wineries are producing a range of Rieslings. The Rieslings ranged from very dry (almost no residual sugar) to Late Harvest and Ice Wine, which are semi-sweet and sweet (high in residual sugar).  Many were unimpressive as many wineries were serving and selling the 2008 vintage.  However, some wineries made excellent 2008 Rieslings and some were still serving and selling the 2007 vintage.

Good red wines were harder to find, but we found a few very good Cabernet Francs, some good Baco Noirs, and some good red blends, often from the 2007 and even the 2005 vintages.  Good red wines were more expensive (often $25 or more) than the good whites ($15-20).  We found a few bargains, including some blends that were unique, interesting, and tasty.

We had some extraordinarily good experiences wine tasting, and many just so-so experiences.  So many people travel to and taste wine in the Finger Lakes, sometimes the servers seem disinterested and are obviously just doing their jobs.  Other times, the servers are very interested in wine, in the people they are serving, and help create a wonderful, educational wine-tasting experience.  We would never visit most of these wineries on a weekend as they get hundreds, sometimes thousands, of visitors each day and have to move people through the tastings as quickly as they can.  On weekdays, however, staff are less harried and sometimes we were the only people in the tasting room, especially earlier in the day (most open at 10 AM and close at 5 PM on weekdays).

A few of our favorite wineries this trip, those where we found good wines at reasonable prices and friendly, knowledgeable staff, included Lakewood, Hermann Wiemer, Heron Hill, Prejean, Red Tail  Ridge, Fox Run,  Billsboro and White Springs on the West side of Seneca; Leidenfrost on the East Shore of Seneca;  Goose Watch and Sheldrake Point on the West side of Cayuga, and Heron Hill, Hunt Country, and Keuka Spring on Keuka.  Many other wineries were fine as well, but the stars were especially well-aligned this trip when we visited these wineries.  We had many other good experiences and found some good and affordable wines at other wineries, but in retrospect, these are the most memorable and where we bought the most or some of the best wine.

For our Wines of the Finger Lakes class this coming Thursday, we have narrowed down our examples to Red Tail Ridge Semi-dry Riesling or Heron Hill Single Vineyard Riesling, Chateau Lafayette Reneau Cuvee Rouge, Fox Run Arctic Fox, Bellhurst Golden Pheasant, White Springs Gewurtztraminer and Lucas Cabernet Franc.  Registrations can still be made for this class by calling MCCC's Continuing Education office at the Pottstown Campus at 610.718.1861 until 4 PM Thursday.

We have some other good examples as well, so plan to offer an Finger Lakes II class sometime soon.

All in all we had a good trip, a great time, and look forward to returning to the Finger Lakes in a couple of years when the 2010 vintage is released.  Like Eastern Pennsylvania, 2010 was a dry year in the Finger Lakes so most of the 2010 vintage wines should be much more concentrated, intense, and tasty than most of those we found this year.

Friday in the Finger Lakes

Day 6 in the Finger Lakes.

We had not planned our day the night before.  It is hard to believe, but we were tired of wine tasting and considered just driving home.  But after a few cups of coffee and a little brighter attitude (the weather was looking good), we decided to stop at a couple of nearby wineries before we headed home.  We intentionally "saved" visiting the wineries closest to our motel for Friday, so we could visit them on our way home without going out of our way and adding driving time to our trip home.

Despite a warning from some friends, we visited Chateau Renaissance.  They serve their tastings in plastic cups and their better wines are their sweet ones.  The serving staff were friendly, there was no tasting fee, but we did not find any wines we liked.

Our next stop was Heron Hill, one of our favorites from many years ago.  We were afraid we'd be disappointed because we had high hopes, but Karyn who served us at the tasting bar, and the wines, far exceeded any expectations.

Heron Hill

We spent over an hour talking with her and tasting wine, including a Riesling that received a 97 rating from Wine Spectator.  Even though it was a bit sweet for our tastes, it will pair well with a spicy dinner.  And how could we NOT buy a wine rated 97 when it cost only $15!  We bought a couple of bottles and may use one bottle in our Wines of the Finger Lakes class.

We almost skipped Dr. Konstantine Frank's because they are a large winery that distributes in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but decided to try it anyway.  Signs directed us to an enclosed porch, where we had to wait for a staff member to open the door and direct a group of 20 who had gathered on the porch to a long tasting bar.  If we had happened to arrive when the porch was already crowded, we would have left, thinking there would be a long wait for the tasting. They do have a notice on the porch explaining why you are waiting, but it is at the door into the tasting room and the people at the back of the line don't know that there is a reason for the wait - so a staff member can properly take care of a whole group at once.  Luckily, we arrived when only a few others were waiting on the porch, and decided to wait a few minutes and see when the next tasting would begin.  We only had to wait a few minutes, then were directed to the tasting bar.  This was a more directed or structured tasting than most, with the server offering everyone a choice of one of two wines (one dry, one less dry) during each of 5 flights.  She was very friendly, answered questions, and made fun of her Austrailian accent.  We had a good time, there was no tasting fee, but we didn't buy any wine.  The problem with this tasting method is that the wines we were most interested in were not offered for tastings, so we could not taste, so would not buy.

We skipped Pleasant Valley and Bully Hill.  They are large, commercial wineries with wines you can buy at the PA Wine and Spirits stores.  Mostly, they feature semi-sweet and sweet wines.  Pleasant Valley produces Great Western Sparkling wines.  We had fun at these wineries years ago when we were still drinking (and enjoying) sweeter wines.

A vineyard at Six Mile Creek

After Dr. Frank's we headed home, stopping at a cheese dairy (there is also a cheese trail in the Finger Lakes), and then at a final winery, Six Mile Creek, just South of Ithaca.

We did a quick tasting and headed home.

Tomorrow we'll post one more blog summarizing our trip along with some of our favorite wineries and wines.

Thursday in the Finger Lakes

Writing this post took a while because we were getting really tired.   Thursday another full day, although we combined winery visiting and wine tasting with some sight-seeing.  Friday was a long day because we were visiting wineries, doing some geo-caching, and driving home.  Saturday we had to prep and then do the wine presentation at Mom's House Wine Dinner Celebration, and Sunday we were organizing our wine purchases, deciding what wines to use for our Wines of the Finger Lakes class this Thursday, and then going to an AWS wine tasting in the afternoon.

Days 5 (Thursday) in the Finger Lakes

We started Thursday by driving to the Western Shore of Cayuga and South to Taughannock Falls State Park where we walked the dogs and enjoyed the dramatic scenery of the falls, the cliffs, the gorge, and the trail that follows the stream that flows from the base of the falls.  This photo is from the top. The falls drop over 200 feet to the pool below.

We also found two geo-caches nearby, including one that took us on the old Black Diamond railroad bed and to another dramatic view of another smaller waterfalls and gorge.  Then, around noon we headed North to wineries and lunch.  We began wine tasting at Lucas, then went on to Sheldrake Point, and then back to Americana for lunch. 

The view from Lamoreaux Landing

We had a very nice lunch along with a bottle of wine, bought some wonderful fudge, and then headed back to the Eastern shore of Seneca where we visited Lamoreaux Landing, Wagner, and finally Hazlitt.  Wagner produces wine and beer, and at that point we were tiring of wine (hard to believe) so we did a beer tasting instead of a wine tasting.  On our way out one of the staff talked with us and after learning we were fans of dry red wines, offered us tastes of their Cabernet Franc. It was one of the best reds we tasted so far, so we bought a bottle.

We ended another long day with dinner in our room and a bottle of Merlot from Fox Run (falling asleep off and on watching the Phillies).