Happy New Year! I hope your celebration of 2014 is an enjoyable and successful one. 2013 was a tough year for many and that may cause the celebration to see it finished be one of exuberance. I hope you enjoy some great wines, regardless if you are going out or staying home. We are staying home and enjoying some 1993 Lindemans Porphyry followed by a glass of 1967 Lindemans Vintage Port to bring on the new year.
I want to make sure you have an enjoyable time, but also that you travel safe, remain safe and make it home alive. Drinking too much and driving can endanger not just yourself, but everyone around you. As a Responsible Server of Alcohol, I urge you to take every precaution to make it home safely, including:
Plan ahead and have a designated driver
Taste, don’t drink
Eat plenty of food to absorb alcohol
Use a breathalyzer, now available at many establishments
Listen to your friends and loved ones if they mention you need to be careful
Hire a cab or grab a lift with a friend if offered and there is any doubt as to your sobriety
You are responsible for yourself, your loved ones and others around you. A split second can change – or end – your life. Don’t get so caught up in celebration, that you lose control of your senses and judgment. Drive safe, keep well and have a great New Years Eve!
I often get asked the question, “Do like like Shiraz,” or “Do you like Chardonnay,” or something similar. Recently, I was asked if I like Port. I do! But what is Port? True Port wine or Vinho do Porto comes from the Douro Valley in Portugal. There are over 100 grape varietals sanctioned for making Port wine. Additionally, many other countries make Port-styled wines. With so many differences in the grapes, the regions grown and styles of Port, it is almost impossible to define what Port wine is. It comes sweet, semi-sweet and dry. It comes as single vintages (Vintage Port) or Tawney Port which is often multiple vintages aged for several years in wood and blended to provide some interesting characteristics.
The other evening my brother-in-law and his family were staying with us and we decided to drink some Port wine after dinner. I started with my regular drinking Port which is currently the 2004 Dow Vintage Port. I have one bottle of the 1977 Dow Vintage Port (for a special occasion and to drink with great pleasure over a short period of time in the not too distant future). I also have two bottles of the 2007 Dow Vintage Port which is one of the highest rated vintages ever, but those two bottles will be lying in the cellar for another 20 years or so before I touch them. The 2004 Dow Vintage Port is a very nice wine. This wine matured early and is easily drinkable now. It is fruity and has softened, especially when the bottle has been open for a while. This wine is very inexpensive ($12 – $15 per bottle in the US and about $25 – $30 per bottle in Australia) and provides for a great-valued drink. A truly wonderful drink for the money, but should be drunk over the next few years.
We then tried a bottle of Penfolds Grandfather Tawny Port. This is a non-vintaged Port blended across eight years with the vintages all being 20 years old or so. This wine was very, very smooth and had a completely different mouthfeel to the 2004 Dow Vintage Port. The Penfolds Granfather Tawny Port had a luscious, smooth feeling with caramelized, nutty sugars. The wine reminded me of the recent Christmas fruit cakes with brandy I had eaten – thick, juicy and sweet. A completely different style of Port from the 2004 Dow Vintage Port.
We then opened a bottle of the 1967 Lindemans Vintage Port. This ismy last bottle and while not quite as good as the 1954 and the 1957 Lindemans Vintage Ports I have had, it is a magnificent wine. I had some problems getting the cork out being soggy after 35 years in the bottle! Even the Ah So corkscrew was not able to help and ultimately, I ended up with the cork in the bottle. Yet, I was able to pour us a glass and we had just experienced our third very different Port that evening! The 1967 Lindemans Vintage Port was very big with plummy fruit flavors, luscious to the feel on the tongue beautiful, but slightly medicinal smells.
Therefore, when asked if I like Port, the answer is a resounding YES! I like the wide variety of Ports available from Vintage to Tawny, young and old, but particularly very old (30 years or more). Ports take on so many different identities with various flavors and styles made from so many different varietals of grapes that it is impossible to classify Port as a single type of wine. There are many different Ports, but any good Port is a great companion when sitting down in the evening and reading a good book.
Is Penfolds Grange worth the money? I certainly asked that question back in 1997 when I bought my first Grange, the newly released 1992 vintage at $200 per bottle. I was drinking some fine Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon and Hunter Valley Shiraz for less than one-tenth that price. Of a total of 4,000 bottles in my cellar at peak, I never had more than eight bottles of Penfolds Grange. I only have one bottle of 1981 Grange left.
The question ‘is Grange worth it?,’ certainly depends on who you are and why you are drinking it. As I have become more comfortable with drinking quality instead of drinking brand – a concept I explore in Wine Sense – I find a lot of alternatives to Grange which are far better value. Another concept I discuss in Wine Sense is the first two things I really picked up on many years ago when starting to drink better wines: I could identify (1) good balance and (2) good mouthfeel. Mouthfeel is what happens when wine is in your mouth and felt (not tasted via your taste buds) by your palate. It is often most noticeable as tannins affix themselves to the inside of your cheeks. It is also felt through the weight of the wine (due to alcohol level and how the wine has been processed) and if the wine sits comfortably in your mouth or not.
It has been two-and-a-half years since I drank my last Grange until last week. It was the 1971 vintage which is the best Grange I have tasted. It was a special treat as the birth-year wine for my wife’s 40th birthday. This wine is featured in 1001 Wines You Must Try Before You Die by Neil Beckett. The 1971 Grange had great fruit and spice flavors, perfect balance, nuances of oak, fig and dates manifested with each swirl around your mouth, and it had great, great mouthfeel. Given the quality of the wine and event, this Grange was well worth it!
A week ago, we had another Grange, this time the 1993. While it was consumed as part of a standard weekend luncheon among friends, it is a bottle I gave to my friends when they were married several years ago and they insisted on waiting to drink it together with us. We found that opportunity last week, celebrating the birth of their new son and also reuniting with some mutual friends we had not seen for a dozen years.
The 1993 Grange is not considered one of best Grange, yet it is still an outstanding wine as every Grange is regardless of vintage. Penfolds always sources the very best grapes they can find, maintaining as much control over the quality of the grapes as they can in any given year, and year-in, year-out, Grange is made with a style that is identifiable. I was a little worried that the 1993 Grange may be at the end or beyond its best drinking life, but the cork was in perfect condition and the wine excellent. We decanted it for several hours to be served with a Persian beef fillet for the main course. We had a nice Italian Chianti on arrival followed by a 2009 Hugel Alsace Riesling to go with eggplant and tomatoes and then a 2009 McLeish Reserve Chardonnay to go with chicken. Then out came the beef and the Grange!
The wine opened beautifully and came to life during two hours in the decanter. I had been sniffing the Grange to make sure it still had robust flavors and was ready to drink. It had strong plum and blackcurrant flavors and that opulent Grange style. On taking my first mouthful, it was the unique mouthfeel a Penfolds Grange provides that really struck me; full and expansive, yet not over-the-top. The wine and my mouth fused in perfect harmony. The wine did not need to be paired with beef as it was paired with my tongue and cheeks perfectly! My upcoming book Wine Sense discusses how our senses are used to appreciate and enjoy wine. We use all of our senses from our sight to smell and taste, but also feeling and even hearing wine. Our perception of taste is cross-modal and one of the wonderful things about tasting wine is how our senses of smell, taste and feeling come together to provide such a sensually fulfilling experience. With Grange, you can really feel the wine. By reputation and weight, Grange possesses strength and firmness when holding a glass of it. But it is in your mouth that Grange shows it worth. It may seem strange to talk about ‘feeling’ a wine, but you do feel Grange while drinking it. It demands being held longer in your mouth than other wines to enjoy the feeling it provides. It also demands being swallowed in several small swallows with each mouthful to make your mouth and throat muscles work, enhancing the feeling further. If there is a wine that is enjoyed by being felt, it is Grange.
I want to apologize for not writing a wine post for one month. I usually try to get one, if not two out every week. The lack of wine writing has been due (1) intentionally taking six weeks off from looking at Wine Sense, so as to scrutinize it from the reader’s view – not the writer’s view, and (2) I have been focused on building a publishing platform for the book including doing the book cover graphic design, images, formatting and layout. It is all coming together nicely for an early 2014 release.
But I have missed the constant attention to wine bloggin and will be getting back into it next week. We will be three weeks in The Hunter Valley, which has been a source for previous wine writing inspiration! It will be great to have both the time and a glass by my side most days. As Hemingway said, “Write drunk, edit sober.” I never write drunk, but do enjoy a taste or two while putting fingers to the keyboard.
I also wanted to be in The Hunter Valley to validate and finalize some of places I will be recommending for Parts Two and Three in the four-part piece on The Hunter Valley I am writing. I am certain there will be some disagreement over my choices of best places to stay and eat, but I will hopefully introduce you to some exciting new finds. There are so many great reasons to visit the Hunter Valley.
I am very excited about Wine Sense and what it has to offer. Further teasers and information will be released in the next few months which hopefully excites you to read the book. We have established a writing and publishing company, InkIT Publishing to handle our writing and training needs (yes, we are also doing an online training course on wine appreciation!), including the release of Wine Sense. I wanted to prove to myself and others that they can write and publish a book of merit without using a major publishing company. I spent the last three months analyzing and evaluating this decision and have concluded I wanted to go it alone to truly understand the process required and be able to then help others write and publish.
But for now and the next few weeks, it is back to wine blogging! I had a lovely 1993 Penfolds Grange yesterday which will be the focus of my next post!
