Vino Bash at Pinot's

It’s the second-to-last Friday in December. The halls are decked, the candles are lit, and Riesling, The Cheerleader, is putting finishing touches on the holiday cookies for the Vino Bash at Pinot’s (Noir that is)! She has an apron on over her turquoise and black Diane Von Furstenberg Naomi dress. She wanted to make sure everyone would be happy, so she baked ginger snap Christmas trees, shortbread dreidels, and she couldn’t figure out what to do for Kwanzaa so she made Africa-shaped chocolate cookies. Ah, sweet Riesling!

Pinot Noir is not even home yet. She’s still at Saks trying on shoes. All day has been about hair, makeup, nails and frock, and she has not been satisfied with any of it so far. She’s just hoping Cabernet Sauvignon makes an effort not to show up in his stupid team jersey and talk about football all night! But more importantly, as host of this glam slam, she has got to outshine all the other girls – especially Miss Tempranillo, the so-called Dreamgirl. OMG its so hard to be The Princess!

She gave the job of writing the invitation to Merlot, The Poet. Judging from all the silky lyrics he has been throwing at her since they met, she knew he was perfect for the task of presenting her holiday party as the can’t-miss-event –of-the-entire-season. And that he did, for the RSVPs came back in a deluge. He’s so smooth!

Its already 8:30PM and the party starts at 10:00PM. Syrah, The CEO shows up early as always, ready to pitch in and help pull things together. Riesling is relieved he’s here. He grabs her checklist and proceeds to move around Pinot’s large upper east side apartment making sure all I’s are dotted. Chardonnay arrived right on his heels. She wasn’t sure what time she should come and she didn’t want to be late. Plus she wanted to find a comfy spot on the couch so she could fade into the background. She pops into the kitchen to say hello to Riesling.

“Do I look OK?” asks shyly, in sensible flat shoes, wide leg khakis and an off-white cable knit cardigan.

Riesling washes her hands. She takes Chardonnay’s hair down out of the ever-present single ponytail, removes her glasses and hands them to her. “You look great!” she says and turns back to arranging trays of snacks and cookies.

Guests start arriving around 10:30PM. Pinot Gris is the DJ for the evening. He is selecting a great mix from his own collection with a little help from Spotify. His mohawk is freshly cut and he’s in black leather from head to toe with super pointy embellished wing tips. The house is rocking by 11:00PM. But where’s Pinot Noir?

At around 11:15PM, the door flies open. It’s Moscato, The Life of the Party, with a bottle in each hand yelling “Pop Pop!!” The party erupts in cheers and two of his friends carrying a cooler full of bubbly follow him through the crowded room to the coffee table. He jumps up on to the table, opens the two bottles, shakes them and sprays the crowed with sparkling wine. Syrah is appalled. Viognier, The Supermodel, slender and aloof in her yellow satin vintage couture cocktail frock, red leather L.A.M.B. clutch and black Manolo Blahnik heels suddenly comes alive and dives behind the bar in fright to avoid ruining her dress. She just knows it isn’t vintage champagne in the air!

Around 11:30PM sexy Miss Tempranillo arrives on the arm of Cabernet Franc, the Exchange Student. Merlot cuts his eyes at them with a jealous look. “That damned Franc gets all the girls! I bet it’s the accent,” he thinks to himself. She is every picture the dreamgirl, voluptuous in knee high heeled leather boots and a well fitted black calf length cap sleeved knit dress with shimmering silver trim, conservative on her bust line but deeply cut in the back to show off her tattoo, hair immaculatelycoiffed. Franc is in a slim fit double cuff royal blue Thomas Pink shirt with a red Prada blazer and white skinny jeans evoking Lupin the Third. Viognier peeks over the bar to see if its all clear. She spots the two of them and casually eyes Franc. She plots to catch him alone later for a chat, maybe when Temp goes to the bathroom.

Merlot turns his attention to Zinfandel, The Soul Singer, who had arrived about 20 minutes earlier. It would be his first time meeting her in person, even though they have a number of mutual friends. He’s seen her in some of their Facebook photos, but the pics don’t do her justice. She is gorgeous in an off-white silk dress and matching headdress that provide a flattering contrast to her dark cocoa skin tone. He stares at her full lips thinking “baby you can sing my poetry,” as he casually make his way across the room to baby grand piano where she’s standing chatting with Viognier and Syrah.

At around 11:45 Sauvignon Blanc arrives with Verdejo. Sauvignon decides to surprise everyone and show up in modern-day Bing Crosby Christmas special swag, complete with reindeer snowflake sweater and Santa hat. But the Santa hat is black and white and the reindeer on the sweater are trampling grandma. Verdejo sashays into the room, looking for the crudite platter so he can find the snack with the least calories so as to keep his perfect physique on point. His ruby velvet jacket layered over a gray scoop neck $50 Armani Exchange t-shirt is carefully accessorized with a powder blue pashmina scarf. He’s wearing his pewter pinky ring on the hand he always holds a wine glass with – his right one.

Finally, at 11:50PM, the door opens again, an there’s Cabernet Sauvignon looking dapper in a magenta suit and perfectly matched shirt (Versace for H&M) accented cleverly with a canary yellow bowtie and handkerchief. He’s so cocky! On his arm is his lady Pinot Noir, looking as perfect as she had hoped. She settled on the Christian Louboutin black feathered Carnival d’Orsay shoes and that Stella McCartney gold sequined cocktail dress that had just arrived at Bergdorf’s earlier this month. She is accessorized with tasteful black opal drop earrings and lots of black and gold bangles on her wrists. She is smiling and making the entrance she had planned with all her guests looking on. She starts to circulate the room with all the graces of a perfect host, while silently surveying the food and bar set up. She is satisfied with it all. She knew she could count on Riesling and Syrah to make sure her fete was tight! “I have arrived,” she thinks to herself, “the party may begin now.”

In all her earlier kvetching, Pinot didn’t even consider glamour competition from Gewürztraminer, who did indeed show up unexpectedly at exactly midnight. That Diva upstaged Pinot with a spectacular, show stopping entrance into her own party in a pair of Irregular Choice Best of All peacock feather platforms. She let her white rabbit fur coat slide casually off her shoulders to reveal a fabulous sleeveless fuchsia sequined cowl neck ankle length jumpsuit and an obscenely blingy diamond and sapphire necklace with matching earrings, cocktail ring and bracelet that looked like something from a Cartier window display. All eyes turn to take in her shine. Pinot nearly popped her cork!

By 12:30AM, the party was in full swing, and everyone was blending in happy holiday spirit. Here’s to a happy and safe season. Sip responsibly and get home safely!

Meet Chardonnay - The Intellectual

When I think about Chardonnay, I’m reminded of the wallflower, the girl who preferred to fade into the background lest she be singled out and ridiculed for some made up reason. Nonetheless, if you need a tutor or a study partner, sitting at a table with her is your fastest way to an A.

The truth is, just like in the movies, she cleans up very nicely – with some nice clothes (Malolactic) and perhaps a little makeup (aging in oak), she can be rather attractive. But just as she is, in her everyday wardrobe with her hair pulled back and poorly chosen spectacle frames, she doesn’t really shine except in the classroom or boardroom.

That’s the thing about Chardonnay. While there is a goodly amount of unoaked Chardonnay on the wine market, much of it has little character and sort of reminds one of a less exciting version of some other varietal white wine. But after fermentation in oak with a dose of beloved lactic bacteria that turns the malic acid into something soft and buttery, and then aging in some more oak to give that round mouth feel and add a layer of flavor complexity, she can really be a bombshell! She lends herself well to these techniques, so to me, Chardonnay as a wine is a study in style, a winemaker’s opportunity to demonstrate artistic talent and intellectual vinification.

The benchmarks for Chardonnay come out of Burgundy’s Chablis and Côtes de Beaune sub regions in France and from the Napa and Russian River Valleys in California. The former homeland can offer a range of styles from the very crisp, mineral, linear wines to the curvaceous, rich and complex, all with precise balance and minimal fruit character. The latter is known for wines that are consistently described as “oaky-buttery”. They often weight in heavy in alcohol and are either beloved or detestable to a wine drinker – the wallflower that has come out of her shell and will never look back!

Think basic with Chardonnay: if you grew up on meat and potatoes, chicken for dinner most nights, Chinese take out or pizza once a week, then it’s an easy wine for you to wrap your head around. Unoaked Chardonnay and ones that have had just a light handed dose of oak lend themselves to almost anything that isn’t spicy or elaborately seasoned or sauced, including poultry, fish, beef and lamb. It’s a comfort wine for comfort food – I love it with baked macaroni and cheese or beans and rice.

Your homework for this week and weekend is to try 5 Chardonnays. Start with a Chablis (the real stuff from France, none of that Franzia 5L Bag-in-Box or Carlo Rossi please!). Shop also for a Napa Valley Chardonnay in the $15 range and an Unoaked Chardonnay from Australia or New Zealand (many specifically say Unoaked on the label). Since Chardonnay is made just about everywhere, have a local one. Chardonnay doesn’t need to be served too cold, so perhaps an hour in the fridge to just cool it down a little if your bottle spent an 30 minutes in a hot subway car or walking down the street in the heat with you. Do Tweet your notes to @wineLIFE_ #ChardonnayHW. Tell us which one was your favorite (please include the wine’s name, vintage and region), how much you paid for it and its best qualities. You can also post notes on the wineLIFE Facebook wall. Also feel free to post questions. We would love to talk wine with YOU more!!

...And Wine for All

Wine is universal. Vitis Vinifera, the grape species populated by the many beloved varieties that are made into the wines we enjoy everyday, has a very special and unique power. Unlike with other fruit, wine made from these grapes can give a world of different flavors that seem to have nothing to do with grapes at all!

What I mean is that wine made from, say, pineapples will taste just like pineapples, plum wine tastes like plums, but when Chardonnay grapes become wine, the wine can taste like green apples. Young Pinot Noir can taste like a salad of fresh raspberries, red cherries and cranberries. After a little time in an oak barrel, it can smell like baking spices - cinnamon and nutmeg, perhaps tobacco leaf and cedar, and it can have the flavor of hickory smoked bacon. Sauvignon Blanc can smell like freshly cut grass and green bell peppers, taste like citrus fruit like grapefruit and lemon, sometimes even passion fruit. No other fruit can do that!

So when I say wine is universal, I mean that with all those wonderful possibilities, there’s a wine out there for every palate. Seriously. If for example you enjoy eating grapefruits, and you love lemonade then I would think you should start buying and trying Sauvignon Blancs from around the world. If you grew up in South East Asia eating lychees, star fruit, rambutan and food cooked with ginger and lots of spices, get with some Gewürztraminer (say it with me now: ge-VIRTZ-tra-MEE-ner)

This is not the same as pairing wine with food. While that is a fun and interesting exercise, it does not definitively address the issue of personal taste and palate memory. If the flavors in a wine are familiar to you, then you will better be able to relate to that wine, and so it can serve as an easy go-to for you. Like when I first tasted Chardonnay, I just didn’t get it. Growing up in a West Indian household, I did not eat apples really - certainly not green ones. So I downshifted to White Zinfandel (don’t judge me). Bubblegum! Yes, I’ve had that! Then I shifted back up into the real wine world by trying some Riesling - yeah, tropical fruit flavors. Now we’re talking! Suddenly wine wasn’t alien to me anymore. Soon afterward, I took my first wine class - the Wine and Spirit Education Trust Certificate at the Birmingham College of Food in the UK - and the rest is history.

Drink what you like based on what flavors resonate best in your food life. That is my best piece of advice for your wineLIFE!

How We Select Wine

How do we Select Wine for wineLIFE Wine Shop?

The short answer is that we taste. We’ve tasted every single wine in the store at least once. People bring us wine to taste, and we try them, and based on their cost, we decide whether we can a. stand behind it as a wine of quality and value for money and b. fit it into our growing catalog of wines (gratuitous plug).

The long answer is still simple. In our store, we want to offer our customers a well chosen selection of wines. So we started by categorizing everything we tasted - first just into groupings like white, red, rosé, sparkling, then into grape variety categories. And so evolved our Chardonnay (including a lovely, oaky-buttery number from upstate New York and an Unoaked refresher from Australia), Sauvignon Blanc (including an austere white Bordeaux and a fruity Argentine darling), Riesling (including both sweet and dry versions and a great 3L Bag-in-Box), Pinot Noir (including one great Chilean under $15 that actually tastes great) and Malbec (including one with a few years of age on it) sections. Thus we began filling in other areas - Sparkling wines with simple sweeties, crisp Cavas and a Blanc de Blanc Champagne, Cabernet and Bordeaux Red blends.

We also wanted to support local as much as possible, so we made sure to fit in a strong offering of wines from the North Fork of Long Island and the Finger Lakes. Rounded out with some great Italian reds, which will expand into a World Reds section (because honestly, we’re probably not going to have a Sangiovese section in the store), an international selection of rosés, some Pinot Gris and Grigio and some great stickies, we have a store we can be proud of.

Now if we could just wean our customers off that damned Bitch Bubbly...

Uses for Cheap Wine #3 - Cooking

I must preface this by clarifying that cheap wine doesn’t necessarily mean bad wine, and it is my firm belief that one should never put any wine in their food that they would not drink. To quote the comedian WC Fields “I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food!”

Here are some tips on cooking with wine at a discount:
When you want to create a perfect pairing of wine with a dish that you are cooking that has wine in the recipe, use the same wine you are drinking in the dish. Now, I’m not saying that you should deglaze* your pan with your Kistler Chardonnay! At $100.00+ per bottle, that would make for one expensive pan jus! Instead, get a Chardonnay that is $8-10 a bottle, something that is similarly oaky, but make sure that it is something you would happily drink on a more casual evening.
To make a fabulous herb butter, add white wine to your recipe for herb butter. The wine will provide balancing acidity - use a $6-8 crisp white such as torrontes, or sauvignon blanc.
Use an $8-12 shiraz or cabernet to marinate tougher meats such as beef cheeks, ox tails, veal shanks or brisket. The acid helps to break down the meat and add wonderful flavor. As always, the wine should at least be drinkable.

This should get you off to a good start cooking with wine! Bon appetit!

*Deglaze - after cooking a meat, poultry or fish on a frying pan, add wine to the hot pan. The wine will collect all the pan residue. Reduce this over a low flame, then add cream or butter to make a great sauce!

Why Champagne?

Not that anyone has ever actually asked me this question, but I thought perhaps it is something we could delve into, what with my upcoming True Champagne tasting at wineLIFE. (hope you are registered already!)

Just to clarify, at the risk of sounding cliché, all champagne is sparkling wine but not all sparkling wine is champagne. Champagne is a place, a region defined by three towns that form sort of an acute triangular slice a mere 100k east of Paris. The towns, cathedral-and-cobblestone-clad Reims, the even smaller Epernay, and the southern satelite of Aÿ create a triad that contains some of the most valuable Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vineyards in the world. The other triumvirate of Champagne is the trio of featured grapes - the two aforementioned, joined by a much more obscure Pinot Meunier in a blended bubbly that varies in style from house to house depending on its recipe.

Here in Champagne exists the greatest anomaly of the wine world: vintage wines are the exception, not the rule. Not only are the wines a blend of grapes, the traditional practice in champagne is to reserve wine in stainless steel tanks every vintage, usually over about 5 years, so as to blend across vintages to achieve the house style. Most champagne sold in the US is non-vintage brut, at around $30.00-$40.00 a bottle - Veuve Cliquot Yellow Label, Taittinger, Laurent Perrier and Pol Roger are some more recognizable ones.

Vintage champagne is only made when the conditions are perfect - not a common occurance in this cool, northerly region. They are given the lofty title Tête de Cuvée, the top pop (tête = head) and fabulous names like Veuve Cliquot’s La Grande Dame, Moët’s Dom Perignon, Laurent Perrier Le Grand Siecle (literally “the great century”) and Louis Roederer’s now highly unpopular but still astronomically priced Crystal. Their price tags and packaging always match their status - a Tête de Cuvée starts at around $100.00 and soars upwards of $250.00 from there.

Champagne comes in a small but intriguing variety of styles that you could have fun exploring. If you like pink, try some brut rosés, the best of which is made by Billecart Salmon and is quite tough to come by! The anomalies continue - champagne is the only rosé that is actually made by blending red and white wines, not by the saignée method (literally bleeding, referring to the steeping of the skins of red grapes in the vat with the juice so they will impart color), and here again, the non-vintage version is less expensive than the vintage version. You can also try creamy Blancs de Blanc (translates literally as white of white) champagnes that are 100% Chardonnay or Blancs de Noir, romantically fragrant wines that are made of 100% Pinot Noir, but are indeed, as their name suggests, white bubblies.

You’ll also notice that sometimes I spell champagne with a lower case c and sometimes with a capital C. Capital C refers to the region, lower case c refers to the wine. But I still haven’t really answered the question have I? Why champagne? Because while there are many great substitutes that are much less costly - I’m a huge fan of Prosecco, I don’t balk at Cava, and I enjoy tasting sparkling wines from a around the world that are made in the traditional method - champagne is the originator of the style - sparkling wine was invented here! As an American wine drinker, who’s market is bursting with cases and cases of fabulous high end champagne (in contrast to England, where cheap champagne lines the shelves of supermarkets nationwide) I can’t help but quote Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell: Aint nothin’ like the real thing, baby, aint nothin’ like the REAL THING!

Stay tuned for Why Champagne? Part Deux - Growers

Tasting While Congested

If you ever wondered if you could party yourself sick, you can. I partied so hard this past weekend, I woke up Tuesday morning with a sore throat, swollen tonsils, and my nose completely clogged. That evening, I was due to taste the wines of Palmaz Vineyards, a small Napa Valley concern down by the city of Napa with just a handful of wineries nearby (most of Napa Valley’s wineries are further north near the towns of Rutherford, Yountville, Oakville, St Helena and Calistoga)

Palmaz is another intense wine story of family, money, change and fortune (see my June 4th blog on Charles Krug). The property, originally a little stone house on a hill, was founded in 1800’s by a gent who was actually distilling, rather than making wine. Henry Hagen, a German immigrant who was a Napa Valley winemaking pioneer, purchased the property in 1881, built a magnificent 4 floor mansion, and took the property from moonshine to wine under the name Cedar Knoll. Sadly, Prohibition would force him out of the business and the property, and when the bank foreclosed on his home and land, he and his family took all that they could carry and left. For 85 years, no wine was made there.

Fast forward to the 1970’s when Dr. Julio Palmaz, a surgeon from Argentina, came to the University of California at Davis to study - who knew UC Davis had a medical school? Inevitably, he met many winemakers and caught the wine bug, but he and his young wife Amalia soon moved south to Texas where he would build his medical career. Their fortunes turned when Dr. Palmaz made a discovery that would revolutionize heart surgery. He created the Heart Stent, a device that holds the artery open to improve blood flow. He sold his invention to Johnson and Johnson, and treated himself to this fantastic property back in Napa, where he and his family now live and work as winemakers.

At a table in the lobby of the swank Ace Hotel in Flatiron, Alan Greenberg, the company’s East Coast representative, told us this captivating story over olives, salami and cheese. Samantha, Betty and I, three of the five board members of Women for WineSense NYC Chapter were about to be treated to a tasting of 5 of this winery’s 6 wines, including a rare vertical of three vintages of their $100.00 Palmaz Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley. But alas, my nose could not cooperate.

I sniffed and I snuffed and I blew but I could only get a tiny bit of air through one nostril. Through that portal I took a deep whiff of the Palmaz Chardonnay Napa Valley 2007 - success! It came though! Crisp green apple, citrus and cream aromas were lovely! On the palate, the acidity was perfect - not so soft as to be flabby from the malolactic, not sharp. Fabulous. I had a lot less luck with wines that were a lot more expensive. I could smell fresh red berry, cassis and hints of cinnamon in a very youthful 2005 Cabernet, and leathery cedar and tobacco aromas in a more mature 2003, but the 2002 was kinda lost on me. I could just cry!!

The Palmaz Muscat Canelli 2007 was spectacular, though. Grapey as Muscat can be, laced with lovely floral aromas. The sweetness was delightful on the attack, but it subsided as it progressed across my palate to a clean finish, and had a nice vein of acidity to balance it out. Very impressed, as were Samantha and Betty.

The moral of the story? Well, I guess there could be several:

Don’t schedule an important wine tasting the day after a big party weekend.

Don’t skip a wine tasting just because your nose is stuffy - you may surprise yourself.

If you can’t control the scheduling of a tasting, bring along other trusted palates to help you evaluate the wines.

A beautiful dessert wine can conquer flooded sinuses!

I can’t wait to taste the wines with a clear nose!

Here's to a Deal!

Imagine my surprise to find Gnarly Head Old Vines Zinfandel 2007 from Lodi CA for a shockingly cheap $8.00 at the Wine Library in New Jersey last week! In my retail days back in 05 and 06, the store I was working as a buyer at, a store that definitely had the ability to take large quantities in to get the best price, was retailing this wine for somewhere in the $13.00 a bottle range. Seeing old Gnarly Head selling for under $10.00 served as a vivid reminder of the state of the wine market and how it, much like the housing market, is definitely in favor of buyers now!

Wine Spectator magazine reported earlier this year that for the first time in modern history, Americans purchased more Prosecco than they did Champagne for New Year’s Eve 2008. The US and Japan have historically been the Champagne region’s top markets for the good stuff that starts around $30.00 a bottle, and goes up for Blanc de Blancs (100% Chardonnay champagnes), Vintage Champagne and Têtes de Cuvée (the top pop, such as Dom Perignon, which is Moët’s top wine and Louis Roederer’s Crystal) to well over $200.00 a bottle. It looks like we wised up, America, and our long honeymoon with Champagne and other high priced wine has come to an end as we realize that less expensive options will fit the bill with just as much festivity. Prosecco, Italy’s most jovial bubbly from Valdobbiadene in the north east, weighs in at a meager $10.00-$15.00 a bottle.

What does all this mean to you? It means that now more than ever, wine is financially accessible. The barriers of high prices are coming down quietly as retail and restaurant operators continue in their struggle to move all the stock they took on during last November and December and wholesalers are not able to clear their warehouses with new vintages coming online. There are lots of great deals around - wines that retailed 3 or 4 years ago above the $10.00 mark are coming down below $10.00, those that peaked at over $20.00 are coming closer to that $15.00 sweet spot.

My recommendation? Buy at around $15.00, but don’t be afraid to take a chance on stuff that is in the $10.00 range. Many shops will cut margins close to move an older vintage out. Reds vintage dated 2003 or later or whites from within the last 2-3 years are usually safe bets for everyday wine drinking, though the picture becomes a little more complex at the higher end. Restaurants won’t be as forgiving on price as they must maintain their caché and make their margins to cover much higher overhead. Nonetheless, I would fish in the $30.00-$50.00 a bottle pond on the wine list of a reputable place, and you will indeed find better deals on wine by the glass these days - sommeliers and bar managers seem to be pushing it below $10.00 a glass, as low as $6.00, in even the most chic neighborhoods.

Baileyanna, makers of boutique, single vineyard, sustainably grown Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Syrah in the Edna Valley region of California, has the perfect formula for their high price points that traditionally started in the low $20.00’s and stretched close to the $50.00 mark, yet I found their 2007 Firepeak Vineyard Chardonnay at a shop in PA for a fabulous $9.99 a bottle - and it was really good!

Also, I always recommend connecting with the folks at your local shop - find someone who steers you in a direction you like with his or her recommendations. But make them stick to your price point - they will have lots of great options that you can enjoy inside your budget. That way, you can continue to live your wineLIFE without going broke!

Epiphany in a Glass

The thing that makes wine grapes so very intriguing is the fact that the wines they become can smell and taste like so many different things in the world - flours and fruit, vegetables and minerals, spices, fur, tar, cedar - the list goes on! No other fruit can claim this talent. In my wine drinking adolescence, I remember how often I’d hear people talk about “buttery” Chardonnay. I had no idea whatsoever what they were talking about. It was a time when I started to question the validity of all these colorful descriptors, started thinking that the aromas and flavors they were talking about were implied - I mean come on, you can’t really smell butter in a glass of wine?! Or for that matter berries, smoke, citrus fruit, tea leaves... stop the nonsense! And then the day arrived when I was sitting in a wine tasting with a glass of California Chardonnay in front of me, thinking to myself “what the heck am I going to write for a tasting note?” I picked the glass up by its stem, pointed my nose downward over the rim and inhaled - “I SMELL THE BUTTER!!” Yes, everyone turned and looked at me, but they all understood my elation - as a wine aficionado, I had arrived.

As my wine education progressed, I learned more about the naturally occurring chemical compounds that create these smells, such as pyrazines that make Sauvignon Blanc smell like green bell pepper (I remember that epiphany well in a glass of Sancerre - it is those same pyrazines that make green bell peppers taste like green bell peppers!), and the lactic acid that makes Chardonnay taste like butter (the same lactic acid that makes butter taste like butter - see the pattern forming?) Not that I had to learn all of these chemicals by name - not that anyone has to learn them. Happily, my epiphanies continue even today, as I discover new things through my many wine tasting (read: drinking) experiences.

Its fun as well to revisit the things that I have discovered in the past, like last night, enjoying a glass of J. Bookwalter’s Subplot No. 22. from Columbia Valley, WA (NV) at Sweet and Lowdown in the Lower East Side and I suddenly felt something hard click against my tooth. I was tickled to find wine diamonds, those tartrate crystals that sometimes form when wine is changing temperature, clinging to one side of my empty glass. They are not common anymore, as most wineries will cold stabilize the wines before releasing (the wines are chilled down to make the tartrates form, and then filtered out and bottled), but they are a naturally occurring phenomenon in wine, and I remember the first time I spotted them myself while tasting a Pinot Gris in one of my WSET lessons. A few years later, I was working in a retail wine shop in SoHo when a woman came in looking very displeased, complaining that there was glass in her wine. The feeling of the little crystal on my tongue took me back to that memory, and although she would not believe me when I tried to explain, I felt good at least that I could offer an explanation. What can I say? I guess one woman’s epiphany is another woman’s fright.

I’m looking forward to my next epiphany, though its becoming harder, as I have discovered so much already. Time to really get my feet stained!