A wine geek moment

I don't normally feel like I know something about wine--I mean, I do, some, but I'm still learning the wine list at work and so usually I defer to the sommelier when someone has a wine question. However, I got to stump the sommelier this weekend.

When I got to Seattle, I got on the mailing list for Garagiste. They import small-batch wines, available to those on the email list. Typically I'll get 1-2 emails a day from them, with new wines for sale. I've bought a couple of things, here and there. The first of the orders arrived this weekend, so I made an appointment to go pick it up.

Oh. My. God.

The warehouse--which is utterly nondescript and in a weird part of town--also had a retail showroom. Meaning I could browse the shelves and buy more wine. And it was the most eclectic, most heart-warming wine collection I've seen in a while. Half the stuff on the shelves was stuff I recognized from the Craigie on Main wine list, stuff I thought I'd left behind forever because most of it doesn't get imported to the West Coast.

Naturally I had to buy some. I stopped myself at two bottles, because otherwise it could have gotten ridiculous, but I may have to go back next weekend and get some more.

One of the bottles I got was Susucaru 2. I won't go into the details, you can look that up for yourself if you're interested, but it's a funky, hard-to-find rose from Sicily. It's completely unfiltered, no sulfites or preservatives added, and it's incredibly lean. Super-acidic, lots of gunk floating it it, made from native Sicilian grapes no one's ever heard of.

I took it into work to crack open after service, and the sommelier and I had a good time geeking out over the bottle. It started off almost all acid, but the fruit opened up nicely after a few minutes and by the end of the bottle I found myself wanting more. The warehouse had more wines by that same producer (red wines); I want to go back and try those next week.

Vancouver (again)

It's been a couple of days since I last posted; we visited Vancouver for a day, and yesterday we wore ourselves out getting some new sofas. More on that later.

We went up to Vancouver for the day because why not? It's two and a half hours away and neither of us are working right now. (A situation that's making me increasingly nervous.) It was rainy and foggy, just like Seattle, but it was fun to get away and walk around in a different country. We didn't see much, a couple of wine stores and a nice restaurant for lunch, and a bit of walking around downtown, but it was enough. It was similar to my last visit to Vancouver, during the epic road trip.

I found a wine store to stock up on Laughing Stock wines, my favorite BC wine. I've written about Laughing Stock before; this time I got a sampling, a viognier, a pinot gris, a white blend, a red blend, and a syrah. We also had lunch at Salt Tasting Room, where we were able to sample a number of extremely delicious wines, none of which I'll be able to find here, I'm sure. We'll definitely be back.

Speaking of bringing wine back into the US, I learned some things at the border.

1. You can buy booze at the duty-free at the border, but you can only bring 1 liter per person, if you've been in Canada more than 48 hours. Less than 48 hours = no duty-free booze.
2. You may have to pay the duty if you buy more than 1 liter per person (which is about $3 per bottle), but you may also be levied state tax, and if you live in Washington state, that means the full 35% extra tax per bottle.
3. Wine is of course not charged the exorbitant WA state booze tax, but is still subject to duty taxes.

For our next Canadian forays, I'd really like to do a wine tour of British Columbia, and in the summer, a tour of the Canadian Rockies. For now, I'll settle for a couple of quiet days at home, cooking.

Wine coup

Several weeks ago, I got to taste a 23-year-old bottle of nebbiolo. It was the '89 Boca Le Piane, and it was delicious. All the fierce tannin of young nebbiolo had faded away, leaving just the fruit, and it was amazing.

When we got some in to the restaurant, I sold the crap out of it. But the wine manager refused to let me buy any at cost from him, since we only had a few bottles. There were wailings and lamentations at that.

Oh, but then! Last night, he discovered the very last bottle had a scuffed label--unsuitable for customers, so he told me I could finally have one.

I am now the excited and proud owner of a 23-year-old wine, and I'm going to drink the shit out of it.

Let's all pause for a moment and remember what we were doing in 1989.

I was starting high school--the worst three years of my life. (I say three, because as we all know, I skipped that last year entirely to start college early). You couldn't pay me enough to live through even one more day of high school.

Today I'm visiting some very old and dear friends from college. I may drink this wine with them (I haven't decided). I may save it for when my best friend visits next week. Either way, this wine is older than all of those friendships.

But not by much.

A particularly fun bottle of wine

Yes, that bottle is meant to be upside-down.


Movia Puro Rose is a sparking rose wine, made on the border of Slovenia and Italy. It's stored upside-down because its yeasts have never been disgorged.

This bottle, if you can find it, is a perfect conversation piece for a party.

See, when champagne/sparkling wine is made, the winemakers first make a still white wine. Then they put that still wine in bottles and add yeast and sugars. The yeast eats the sugar, creating carbon dioxide, which is trapped in the bottle--that's what creates the bubbles in champagne.

Normally, the bottles are then turned, slowly pulling all the yeast down into the neck of the bottle, into a plug that can be disgorged. The yeast plug shoots out, the winemaker tops off the bottle with a little more grape juice and sugar, and reseals it, leaving the bubbles intact.

But the Puro Rose was never disgorged. That yeast plug was still in there.

For last weekend's dinner party, I got a bottle. (Courtesy of my restaurant, which allows me to buy the wine off their list at cost. This bottle was not in fact on the wine list--it was brought in for a special occasion dinner a few weeks ago, and they graciously allowed me to purchase one of the leftover bottles. Trust me, this stuff is not easy to find.) It comes in a sleeve, which allows you to keep it upside down, keeping that yeast plug intact.

To open it, obviously you have to disgorge the yeast plug. There's a heavy metal clamp holding the cork in;  you'll need a screwdriver or something to pry it off. But be careful--the INSTANT that metal clamp is pried off, the cork will shoot out and you'll have a fountain of expensive sparkling rose all over your floor. Be sure to have enough presence of mind to pull the bottle upright immediately.

I got a fair amount all over my floor, but it was quite a show. The wine itself was lovely--deep, complex, faintly bready. Definitely the best sparkling anything I've ever had. (Which, granted, is not an especially wide category.)

And getting wine all over my living room was never so much fun.

Addison

Saturday night we utilized one of our best wedding presents--a gift certificate to Addison, San Diego's only five-star restaurant. Some preliminary research revealed our largesse would not stretch far enough to cover dinner for two with wine pairings, so instead of a half-assed dinner, we decided to spend our money instead on some really nice wine. Just wine, no dinner. (Okay, we did get a cheese plate.) We ended up getting two bottles of different styles, though the first was by far and away the best one.

This was the first wine:

And this was the second one:

The first was a Rhone Valley Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Really lovely, fruit forward but also earthy, with some nice hints of truffle and blue cheese. Lush, good mouth feel. I'll be drinking a lot more Rhone Valley wines in the near future.

The second was Californian, so we had an Old World wine and then a New World one. It was just what you'd expect from a big Californian cab--big, jammy, tannic, lots of alcohol. Good, but anything would have been a disappointment after that first wine.

The experience was wonderful--getting dressed up, sitting at the elegant bar drinking our expensive wine, acting like sophisticated-type adult people, and not like old married people who can't afford to eat out ever and will be going home to change into old bathrobes and reheat some leftover chili for dinner. Alas that our budget can't stretch to cover evenings like that more often!