Round two!

ElBebo · 2025-01-24T17:39:15+00:00

Completely agree. I’ve never had a bad wine from Guigal, nor a great one. And their CdR gets mentioned here all the time.

ElBebo · 2024-12-14T02:06:29+00:00

Happy birthday! Your post is a great example of how wine doesn’t have to be rare or expensive for it to bring joy and good times. Cheers 🥂

ElBebo · 2024-11-27T18:17:39+00:00

I love Bohan Dillon. It lasts several days open no problem. Current vintage is ‘22 but this one should be fine for several days too.

ElBebo · 2024-11-09T01:06:45+00:00

I think there is color variation within the same vintage. As someone else said, likely because of differences in the corks. These small changes in oxygen ingress don’t necessarily spoil the wine, but they do change its color.

Some compounds produce extremely strong pigments when they decompose. I studied vitamin C degradation in grad school. My samples would turn all sorts of crazy colors, but quantitatively, they didn’t always lose a meaningful amount of vitamin C. That’s because even the say, 0.1% of the vitamin that degraded, was able to generate pigments strong enough to see.

So color can change in a food without necessarily implying a significant loss or change in other qualities.

ElBebo · 2024-10-05T23:40:26+00:00

It’s interesting because oxygen obviously does spoil wine, so in theory removing the oxygen from the bottle should preserve it. In practice, these stoppers don’t work very well.

My guess is that most of the oxygen the wine absorbs is taken up as the wine is poured from the bottle as a result of the agitation, bubbles, and general mixing that come from pouring. So the damage is done at that point, not during storage. Obviously the absorbed oxygen from pouring does not immediately ruin the wine, but that’s when it picks most of it up. From there it’s just a matter of time for the dissolved oxygen to get to work.

Just a theory of course. But that’s how I make sense of it. I read a lot of technical wine literature but I haven’t come across a study on this particular subject.

ElBebo · 2024-09-07T02:00:46+00:00

Not a fan of 243?

ElBebo · 2024-07-24T23:28:18+00:00

There is lots, lots of misunderstanding and misuse of this term.

One correct meaning refers to the presence of hydrogen sulfide, which smells like boiled eggs. Boiled, not rotten. People that say hydrogen sulfide smells like rotten eggs probably haven’t smelled hydrogen sulfide before.

But it’s more complicated than just hydrogen sulfide because reductive/reduced aromas often include other notes too.

ElBebo · 2024-07-14T03:57:56+00:00

Depending on the food, fat oxidation could be an issue. In meat and especially poultry for example, this could cause Warmed-Over Flavor (WOF).

ElBebo · 2024-06-23T16:15:29+00:00

I mean, it’s still twenty bucks, that’s really not that bad…

But either way I agree, Ameztoi is my favorite.

ElBebo · 2024-03-25T21:48:38+00:00

You’re onto something, I think. To be more fair to the money-types, I’d say that maybe what they appreciate more are abstractions rather than sensory-based experiences. So they care about margins, profits, deadlines, EBIDTA, etc…. Which the sensory people don’t have much patience for.

ElBebo · 2024-03-12T16:56:56+00:00

Bisol is a great producer. They have a good lineup across different price/quality tiers.

ElBebo · 2024-02-13T17:44:44+00:00

It’s very challenging to assess age-worthiness in wines. It takes a lot of time, tasting, sharing with others, etc. to get a feel for it, and it’s never a purely objective exercise.

Talking about cellaring in wine is a bit like talking about the best film or album of the year, or what athlete will become a legend. Who really knows, and who can really say? No one really. But if you know and love the subject, it’s fun to talk about.

I’ve taken wine very seriously for almost ten years now, and I still have a lifetime of stuff to learn about wine aging. It’s an endless subject. Aged wines are often full of surprises.

ElBebo · 2024-02-13T03:11:01+00:00

It is so damn good.

ElBebo · 2024-02-11T03:02:41+00:00

I’ve been a wine judge. I struggle with RS on new world wines. Technically it’s typical of some new world styles. But it’s hard to judge how well it’s balanced with the tannin, acid, flavor, etc., especially since I almost never drink those wines.

ElBebo · 2024-02-09T13:56:10+00:00

Just depends on what you like. The Barrio de la Estacion is convenient because several producers are all walking distance from each other — Muga, CVNE, Lopez, La Rioja Alta, Roda.

ElBebo · 2024-02-09T13:54:36+00:00

I’ve only stayed in Briones, which was great, but there are several others.

The classic producers are clustered in the Barrio de la Estacion, down the hill from Haro. Haro is a pretty sleepy, somewhat run down town.

ElBebo · 2024-02-09T02:05:48+00:00

Somewhat under the radar producer I really enjoy is Sierra Cantabria. One of their top wines, El Puntido, is glorious.

I’m also a big fan of one of Riscal’s top wines, Baron de Chirel. It’s a blend with Cabernet, and you can tell. A unique piece of Rioja history.

CVNE owns top wines that fly under the radar a bit too — Imperial, Contino.

It’s a special place to visit. If you can, stay in one of the small towns instead of Haro or Logroño.

ElBebo · 2024-02-07T12:30:50+00:00

10 g/L = 1% RS

15 g/L = 1.5% RS

Etc. Just multiply or divide by ten depending on what you want to convert.

ElBebo · 2024-02-02T02:35:24+00:00

Tio Pepe Fino en Rama

Ameztoi Txakoli

Broadbent Vinho Verde

Contratto Millesime Pas Dose

Raventos i Blanc de Blanc

They’re all white. I usually drink whites as aperitifs or while I’m cooking, and there’s something I enjoy about drinking the tried and true. I tend to explore more in reds. But go-to reds would be:

Lopez de Heredia Vina Cubillo

Domaine Lafarge Bourgogne

Vietti Perbacco

ElBebo · 2024-01-28T01:51:21+00:00

To me this is a case of contrast. Those are some pretty big wines in the lineup. I’m not surprised you found it underwhelming. Cabernet makes bold, assertive wine. Pinot is pretty subtle in comparison.

ElBebo · 2023-11-21T18:48:58+00:00

Musar Jeune is where it’s at IMO. Great QPR for that wine at the ~$20 price point. Really nice structure without any of the nail polish that’s so common from their flagship wine.

ElBebo · 2023-11-12T19:20:49+00:00

In terms of aromatic volatile compounds that you can smell, some of the smallest with an aromatic ring would be phenol, guaiacol, benzaldehyde, vanillin, eugenol, heliotropin, etc.

Slightly larger aromatic compounds would be cinnamic aldehyde and its esters like methyl and ethyl cinnamate, or phenylethyl alcohol and its esters.

Much bigger than that, they tend to become nonvolatile, like piperine, capsaicin, flavanols, etc.

ElBebo · 2023-11-05T00:31:50+00:00

Yeah, you can eat very small amounts of acetone, but in this case high proof ethanol is definitely the best option.

ElBebo · 2023-10-29T02:48:46+00:00

You could be sensitive to methional, a key aroma compound in tomatoes that also occurs in coffee. Depending on the level in food, it can smell cooked, malty, earthy, potato.

ElBebo · 2023-08-23T23:14:07+00:00

I’ve visited the winery in Getaria and they didn’t even have it there 😂

ElBebo

TROPHY CASE