Wining at year's end...

JD & the Goddess

Hard to believe it's the last week of 2012. The Goddess of Wine and JD have gone to lots of wine tasting events, lots of dinners, lots of gatherings, lots of wineries. There has been good wine and bad wine - some astonishing in both directions - and a lot of drinkable, but ordinary wine. We've made new friends, said goodbye to some old friends, made discoveries both personal and professional.

Miscellaneous wining...ZAP & Family Winemakers & some random thoughts...

In January, JD and I went north for ZAP - the Zinfandel Advocates & Producers 4-day event. Well, we didn't go for four days, we went for the Grand Tasting. It was immense - over 200 wineries all pouring Zinfandel from all over the world.

Some wineries, like Ian Blackburn's Beekeeper Cellars, poured one wine; others poured anywhere from 3 to 9 wines - all Zins! We were grateful to have been included as media, so that we were able to enter the tasting at 10 a.m., and we still tasted only a fraction of the wines by the time we left at 3:30 p.m. There were writers who reported within 24 - 48 hours that they had tasted hundreds of wines. By my reckoning, we tasted the fruits of around 40 wineries, so maybe we tasted 80 - 100 wines.

It was fascinating to taste the regional differences among all those Zins. I discovered that if I'm going to just sip a Zin, I want Zin from Paso Robles or Lodi, but if I'm going to pair it with food, I want a Zin from Dry Creek. I also realized - well, I knew this already - that I would rather taste fewer wines and have a bit more quality time with the winemakers to get the inside story about their passion and process.

Wining by proxy...A guest post from the First Acolyte himself...

So many wine events, so little time! Back on March 15th, the Family Winemakers of California came to town, but the Goddess couldn't get there...sob! So I sent my First Acolyte, JD, to cover the event. Here is his report:

Popping up from parking at the convention center I found myself in the conference building. Discovered the Exhibit Hall is on the other side of the Center grounds. I planned on mostly hitting wineries I was unfamiliar with, which would unfortunately mean skipping many known great tastes.

The doors opened and I headed for the end of the alphabet and started with William James Cellars, who had called the Goddess asking to be sure to taste their wines. Started with the “Simply Gorgeous” Grenache Rose, had good cran- & other berry spice, light, a nice start which led to the regular Grenache “Smoke Rings”, a slightly heavier version. “Persuasive” Pinot Noir had some nice earth in it. I found the Cabernet Sauvignon was a little hot on the nose, but would probably quiet down given a little time to swirl. Sampled a couple others too, but was getting a little anxious to move on- so many wineries in this huge room!