I have learned a great deal about wine over the last fifteen years and take my wine drinking seriously. But from time to time, I make a stupid mistake. In my upcoming book, Wine Sense(s), I discuss the importance of rinsing glassware thoroughly so as to not leave any food odors or soap films on the glasses or decanters. Unfortunately, I did just that and poured a $200 bottle of wine into a decanter which I did not realize had a leftover soap film from the last time I cleaned it! Ugh! What a waste and what to do?
I was leaving the wine to decant, then poured a glass for me to have. I returned the rest of the wine into its original bottle and stoppered it to keep it fresh for the rest of tonight and tomorrow. It was not until I was rinsing out (without any soap) the decanter that I realized it had a soap film from the last time I cleaned it. Such a shame and such a waste. I went to give the decanter a good rinse with plain hot water and all of a sudden, I was pouring out soap bubbles! There was not much soap, but it did have a number of bubbles and I had to give it a really good rinse to get it clean. Unfortunately by then, the damage had been done.
The brick purple color was dulled slightly from the soap and it appeared to have just a touch of grey to it. More importantly, I could taste that the wine was a bit off, even though the underlying flavors were still evident and huge. Still since I am having it with a spicy, hot red Thai beef curry, I am going to drink this wine (or some of it). And I feel I need to do that as penance for my mistake and to cement the lesson learned. I want to never, ever make this mistake again! It is still an excellent wine, if not a bit soapy. Interestingly enough, the tactile sensation via mouth feel is the same or possibly even slightly enhanced by the soap! But the aftertaste and finish is not what it should be.
I continue to learn and want to pass those learnings onto others. More and more in talking to the people at Riedel and others, I have heard them tell us that (1) do not clean glasses with soap between courses of a meal; there is nothing better than alcohol (from the previous glass of wine) for cleaning your glasses followed by a rinse of water, and (2) glasses and decanters are dishwater safe. I am now going to follow their advice. I have been washing all of my glasses and decanters by hand and also using too much soap. From now on, I will look to clean them with no or very little soap and then rinse them or use an alcohol spray to disinfect and clean them (this is what most restaurants do), and for larger gatherings, will now use the dishwasher to clean and THOROUGHLY rinse my glasses and decanters.
I made a large mistake this evening and hope to never repeat it. Feeling bad as SAZ in the Cellar!
My wife, DAZ in the Kitchen, is making a magnificent slow cooked beef with mushrooms and barley for this evening! I have been smelling it cook for the last two hours and getting ravenous! We will have a serve of Quinoa and a light salad as sides. With such a combinations of flavors going on, we thought a nice Bordeaux style blend would go really well with this meal. I have had one bottle left of the 1992 Lindeman’s Pyrus which I have been saving to enjoy with some friends, but we just have not been able to arrange a meal together (well, we did, but had a bottle of the 2001 Henscke Hill of Grace with that meal). Fortunately for them, we still have two bottles of the 1992 Lindeman’s Limestone Ridge which I am sure we will drink together.
The ’92 Pyrus is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec and Cabernet Franc. I love this blend as each flavor comes through. I have written about this wine previously, when I pulled a bottle out and we had it with soup! You can refer to that post to get a review of the wine. As with that bottle, the cork was perfect on and the sample of wine I had while decanting indicates that this is a slightly fresher and fruitier bottle than the last one we tried. It should be a perfect match for the dinner. We once again will be serving this wine in the Riedel Vimun XL Grand Cru Bordeaux glass to get maximum enjoyment from the wine. The only thing that beats a perfect food and wine match is the same thing, but serving the wine in a Riedel glass! I discuss the benefits of using proper glassware and taste in my upcoming wine book at some length. For a synopsis on why proper glassware is important, review my previous post on Riedel glassware.
This meal and wine will be special. I am sorry we could no longer save our last bottle for dear friends, but we have more than enough ‘last’ bottles to share with them – more than we can find time to drink them all. So it was with some regret, but more excitement that we opened our last bottle of the 1992 Lindeman’s Pyrus to match our wonderful beef dinner this evening.
Now that Daz in the Kitchen has rebuilt her computer and is catching up from helping me with a number of technical and publishing issues, she should be able to get a post with the recipe out soon. In fact, she just wrote the post with the recipe, and I am sharing with you here.
While you are unlikely to find a bottle of the 1992 Lindeman’s Pyrus to go with this meal, any good Bordeaux blend or a blend such as the Rosemount Traditional should work just fine. Just make sure it is a Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot blend and optionally either Malbec or Cabernet Franc. A Shiraz blend or a GSM (Grenache, Shiraz, Mouvedre) is likely to be too heavy.
My life does not revolve around wine, but my appreciation and enjoyment of wine is integrated into my lifestyle. I enjoy drinking it, I enjoy sharing in fellowship over a good glass of wine and I enjoy reading and understanding what makes wine so special. I sometimes refer to it as ‘living the wine lifestyle!’
As I look back over this week and forward to the weekend, I reflect on how wine has made my life better. It started last weekend by reading several books on wine and philosophy and making me think about how wine fulfills all five human senses. I have always been curious about which senses are the most important and how they effect our enjoyment of life in general and wine in particular. (Separate blog on this to follow.)
Then Monday after work, I met with a work colleague and client at deVine, one of my favorite wine bars and restaurants. They client had asked a favor and I was glad to help him out which was why I brought my other colleague along. Then after that meeting, my colleague and I caught up on his project status and a few other things. And upon leaving, I saw another contact who is a Partner at a Big Four advisory firm, waved and later that evening received an email from him asking to meet to discuss a large project we may consider doing between his firm and mine. In 90 minutes, that was quite a good amount of business to get accomplished made more enjoyable by a good glass of wine!
I did not drink wine Tuesday or Wednesday as we were going to a Riedel wine glass masterclass Thursday evening which would include tasting, and then out for a big birthday lunch on Friday at our favorite restaurant in The Hunter Valley, Bistro Molines, where we would be drinking some of my wife’s very favorites wines.
Both the Reidel masterclass and lunch were brilliant and among two of the finest events I have ever enjoyed. Georg Riedel, 10th generation glass maker took us through a brilliant dissertation and tasting on the pleasure of drinking different varieties from different types of glasses and the very noticeable difference in taste and pleasure involved. I have written on this previously (in total in about seven different posts as I am so impressed with Riedel glassware and their impact on improving the wine drinking experience) and will certainly do so again in the very near future! Georg also discussed how the shape of the glass effects our smell and taste senses and reinforced what I had been studying over the previous weekend. It was an amazing two hours spent with a master in like company and was both educational and entertaining.
Birthday wines at Bistro Molines
We then drove this morning to our place in The Hunter Valley and went to Bistro Molines for my wife’s birthday lunch. A pure delight and treasure! As usual, the food and service were impeccable and the wines we drank (too much of!) were my wife’s favorites and truly outstanding. I will be writing a review on the dessert wine, the 2006 Chateau Rieussec very soon. And while Bistro Molines certainly has fine glassware, including Riedel to serve from, I was insistent on bringing our own Shiraz and Montrachet Riedel glasses to make sure the wine was served as perfectly as it could be.
And now onto the remainder of our four-day weekend in The Hunter Valley. I will be reading on wine, writing on wine (I have about 15 ideas for posts and I want to build up an inventory for the next month as I will be otherwise quite busy and it is always good to have a number of posts in reserve), studying a wine appreciation and tasting course and of course, drinking wine.
While my life does not revolve around wine, it certainly is enhanced because of it! Wine helps me with business, friendship, and fuels my thirst for continuous learning.
2013 looks to be a spectacular year for Hunter Valley wine. We have been visiting the region frequently during the growing season and the climate and precipitation have been close to perfect. Last year was almost a total loss with far too much rain making the grapes moldy or bursting them before picking, causing most grapes to be lost. And the ones that were saved were likely picked too early and lacked the full fruit flavor that most vintages should have.
Having returned from Qatar in middle of 2009, we were able to taste a number of the 2007 Hunter Valley Shiraz’ as the premium brands were just being bottled and released. I fell in love with the 2007 Hunter Valley Shiraz vintage and purchased at least a dozen of about 14 different brands (and four more different brands of the 2007 Hunter Valley Shiraz vintage where I have a least a couple of bottles), so I would be able to enjoy and compare them for many years to come. I thought it would be a fascinating journey to see how each wine developed over the next decade when compared against its peers. With that in mind, and when tasting the 2007 vintage, I tried to think about how this wine would taste in ten years time. While some wines were already mellow and very drinkable right away, I was looking for and trying to appreciate which ones were too tight currently, but had the big fruit and complexity to mature into a beautiful wine over the next 5 – 10 years.
I set all of them down in the cellar until 2010, but then would drink an occasional bottle. Among my favorites were the 2007 McWilliams Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea, and the 2007 De Iuliis Reserve. However, there are many excellent brands from the Hunter Valley in 2007, each outstanding in their own right. The difference in quality between most of the wines listed below would not be more than several points out of 100.
The wines are now six years old and starting to drink extremely well. Whenever I need a very good Shiraz and do not want to dip into my last bottles of pre-millenium Grange, St Henri, or Vat 9, I will now retrieve a bottle of a 2007 Hunter Valley Shiraz. I have a lot of them including:
All of these wines are excellent wines, and will last at least another decade, but being six years in bottle already, they are a true delight to start drinking now, so that is what I plan to do. (Some, however, like the 2007 Meerea Park Alexander Munro are so big though that they need at least another three years before even attempting them.)
Today, I am having a bottle of the 2007 Wyndham Estate Black Cluster. This is their premier Shiraz and is an excellent wine. I first had this wine when attending a wine and chocolate matching course at Wyndham Estates last year. We had a chili flavor induced dark chocolate and this wine was an excellent match, being powerful and confident enough to stand up to chili chocolate!
Drinking it on its own now, you can tell this is a bold wine with many more years left to help it mature. I may not drink my next bottle for another 5 – 10 years. It has bold, powerful fruit flavors, strongly tasting of plum, cherry and blackberry with some spice. It does not possess as strong a pepper taste as some Hunter Valley Shiraz, but you can still tell it is from the Hunter Valley It also has full tannins, yet a smooth, elegant texture to match the great taste. This wine has deservedly won four Gold Medals.
When drinking the 2007 Wyndham Estate Black Cluster, and recently having sampled the 2007 McWilliams Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea and the 2007 De Iuliis Reserve, I have been surprised to find out how similar these wines are. These are definitely Hunter Valley Shiraz as compared to Victorian or Barossa Valley Shiraz. These wines have slight nuances and their own unique characteristics, but they are more similar than different. It would be very difficult to pick these wines out in a blind tasting.
What excites me about the similarity is that the wine makers let the quality of the grape from the 2007 vintage rule the day. They did not get in the way and try to manufacture a unique outcome for their wine. They let the natural flavor of the grape grown with Hunter Valley terroir do the job for them with this resulting in an excellent batch of wines.
I bought so much 2007 Hunter Valley Shiraz and a little 2009 Hunter Valley Shiraz. 2008 and 2012 were bust vintages. 2010 was ‘fine’ and 2011 was also considered quite exceptional, but I did not buy any of those vintages as I have so much of the 2007, but am starting to work through them more rapidly now. As great as the 2013 Hunter Valley vintage looks, I may pick up some of those also to compare to the 2007 and also just because some of the best winemakers such as Michael De Iuliis, PJ Charteris, and Andrew Thomas are also working with some new sources of grapes (for example Michael now has access to the Stevens Vineyard, one of the best Shiraz vineyards in the Hunter Valley) and I am excited to find out what these wine makers can do with the very best grapes around!
Riedel Vinum Shiraz glassware
If you are looking for a good Shiraz and find a bottle of 2007 Hunter Valley Shiraz, you can feel pretty confident that you will be picking up a very good to excellent bottle, no matter how much you pay for it. These wines deserve to be served in the Riedel Vinum Shiraz glassware also. They are so big and powerful, that frankly no other glass in my opinion will do.
As mentioned previously, my friend gave me a tremendous cigar for my 60th birthday. You could tell by smelling it, that it would be the finest cigar I have ever smoked. Having smoked it today only confirmed the point! I enjoy a great cigar every now and then, usually smoking the Cohiba Siglo #1 or #2 or the Cohiba Robusto. I may have a Montecristo every now and then. Since I may only have three or four cigars a year, it does not make sense to smoke anything less than the best!
Being on vacation, I brought some cigars along to enjoy while sitting on the back deck in the Hunter Valley. I was also looking for a cause for celebration (beyond just being on vacation!) and had it by having our best quarter ever for my group. We are already over 200% of sales plan for the quarter and finished the year on a high note. I also got a call Friday at 5:00 pm that we closed our biggest deal ever so far, so I knew I had plenty of justification (or just plenty of excuse!) for smoking “Castro’s Cigar.” (I will explain more later on how this great cigar made for Fidel Castro found its way to me!)
I also like the idea of smoking a victory or celebration cigar to ‘relish the moment.’ Red Auerbach, as General Manager of the Boston Celtics, would sit in Boston Garden watching his beloved Celtics and when he knew the game was in hand, he would light up a cigar, further intimidating the other team. This was a bit arrogant and I am not sure if he ever lit up, only to have the other team come back and win. (Does anyone know?)
I was even more influenced though by Will Smith in the movie “Independence Day.” After a victory in battle (and isn’t life an everyday battle?), Will would always savor the moment by smoking a cigar. I have followed suit and also like to relish the big victories with a good cigar, and had every reason to do so today.
I know this blog is about wine and we will get to the wine soon! However, my choice of wine cannot be adequately justified without explaining how a cigar intended for Castro made its way to me. These cigars are made by Cohiba. They consists of the very best tobacco leaves (similar to premium wines using only the very best grapes). Cohiba then provides these top end cigars to Castro for his private stock.
(I am not certain if everything I mention here is exactly correct, but it makes for a good story, so I will continue!) Every now and then, some cigars are gifted to special friends or used for diplomatic purposes and found their way into the hands of some of the sheiks from Qatar. (I actually do not know if it is now possible to buy these cigars on the open or secondary market at all, but plan to find out!) My friends son is a physiotherapist living in London and provides regular massage to one or several of these sheiks, who as a tip provided some of the cigars to my friend’s son, who then passed on two to his father. His father smoked one and gave the other to me for my birthday. Therefore, I have been waiting for the perfect setting and occasion to smoke this very special cigar and today was the day.
Many of my friends drink cognac or brandy with a good cigar, but I am not into harder liquors. Therefore, I enjoy a good cigar with red wine or port and decided a good bottle of red wine was the answer today. I originally was going to play it safe and go with a bottle of the 2007 McWillams Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz. This is an outstanding wine and was awarded the ‘best red wine’ several years ago by Campbell Mattinson. I love this wine and knew it would be a great wine to drink while smoking the cigar.
However, I thought that smoking Castro’s cigar was a rare and unique experience and deserved a rare and unique wine. Since we were up in the Hunter, I did not have full access to every wine in my cellar, but found a 1992 Lindeman’s Pyrus. I have had the 1987 Pyrus which was a magnificent wine and decided it was time to open a bottle of the 1992. I was excited as I cut off the seal that the cork appeared in perfect condition – something you cannot guarantee for a twenty year old cork. Still being careful, I used the Ah So cork remover as the best option to get the cork out in one piece and fortunately that is what happened.
I started to decant the wine and was glad to see it still had full crimson color that had not yet turned brownish (a sign that the wine had oxidized to some degree and would be less than optimal if not downright bad). It took a while to work the wine through the filter, even though there was very little obvious tannin separate in the wine. It was just so thick and luscious. While I am sometimes hesitant to use an aerator on a 20 year old wine (since I do not want to break down further an already fragile wine structure), this wine still had a solid structure and I knew that decanting an older Pyrus would take some time and I wanted to help it along with aeration!
We left the wine to decant while out shopping and by the time I got home, it was ready (or maybe since I was just so anxious to get started, I made myself believe it was ready!). Of course, I used the Riedel Vinum Bordeaux glass to drink the wine.
It had roasted nut, plum and full berry flavors. The wine was perfectly balanced with well integrated tannins. It matched a perfect Bordeaux blend using each grape in a well balanced proportion. The grapes were Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec and Cabernet Franc. This was an easy wine to drink, so smooth in texture and at 12.5% alcohol. I loved this wine and it beautifully matched the cigar in terms of rarity and elegance. This wine also won three Gold Medals early in its career.
Wine, cigar and Sandalwood incense burning in the background!
I spent 50 of the most blissful minutes I have ever experienced smoking this cigar and sipping this wine! I was expecting the cigar to go for about 2 hours, as I usually take about 1 hour, 20 minutes to smoke a Cohiba Robusto and this was bigger than the Robusto. I think there were several reasons for the time being shorter than I expected. The first was that the tightness of the rolled tobacco leaves was not as tight as a typical Cohiba and therefore drew more freely and was quicker to burn. Secondly, I was concerned with wasting any possible cigar flavor, so I was puffing harder and more frequently than I would with a so-called ‘normal’ cigar! I just did not want to waste a puff!
I usually cannot smoke a cigar beyond the last 25 cm – 35 cm, as they become too harsh and also are hot on the fingers while holding them. This one however, did not become harsh at all and I could have smoked it to the very end except it was too hot to hold. However, I did get it down to about 18 cm before snuffing it out!
The total experience took 50 minutes and I also got through about 2/3rds the bottle of the 1992 Lindeman’s Pyrus during that time.
While I have had some truly decadent experiences previously in life, I believe this 50 minutes now has reached #1 in terms of decadence and pure sensual pleasure in such a concentrated period of time. I know I will never have a better cigar. I will have comparable wines (heck, I still have two more bottles of the 1992 Lindeman’s Pyrus left!) but the combination of the wine, the cigar and the reason for celebration was a truly unique and pleasurable experience.
We spent Saturday the week past, traveling and visiting friends in the Blue Mountains and beyond. It was a great time and we had some great meals, even though it did make for a very long day. For once, I did not bring the wines and let it up to the hosts to provide the wine to accompany the meals.
During our Saturday lunch, we had some great food starting with three different soups samplers (tomato and carrot, pumpkin, and pea), followed by stir fired veggies and prawns, with a wonderful dessert of chocolate balls and berry ice cream. Each course had a decent wine to go with it from a white to red to sweet dessert wine. And as usual the best part of the meal and experience was sharing it with great friends.
We repeated the performance for dinner, but it was a heavier meal with more meat, including a marinated roast beef side, sausages, and stir fired veggies. Therefore, more red wines were served and the two choices of red were very nice choices. Unfortunately, the first problem was that the wines were drunk too early in their life.
The wine of the evening should have been a very nice 2007 Penfold’s St Henri. This is an excellent wine and has a 96 (out of 100) rating. Usually I would salivate over having a St Henri with dinner, but then we are currently drinking the 1999 vintage (I have about 6 bottle left and need to drink them in the next few years to get maximum enjoyment from them).
But I could tell from the first smell and the first sip of the 2007 that this wine was not ready for drinking! I asked the host how many bottles he had left and he mentioned he had six left. I told him to wait at least two more years if not up to five years before he drinks the next one.
This wine should be drunk between 2015 and 2024 for peak enjoyment and ideally in the 2019 – 2021 time frame. While he decanted and even aerated the wine, it did not have much of an effect as the wine structure was just too tight. And then, the wine was served in a white wine glass used for Riesling or Semillon. This did not allow the wine to breath and forced an already tight wine into a small area to breathe and drink from making it even tighter. There are reasons Riedel makes specific wine glasses for Shiraz and other grapes and drinking a Shiraz from a white wine glass is almost sinful!
This was a great wine, served too early and without giving it any advantage to shine. This was a $75 – $100 bottle of wine wasted. It still had (obviously) fresh fruit, but was too tight and the complexities of this great wine had not become fully integrated. I hope the host takes my advice and does not serve up another bottle for several more years. This will be a great wine over time, but certainly not at its best today when served up in a small glass.
And in that regard, it is important to clean your glassware properly! When cleaning my decanters, I only rinse them out with hot water or use a little bit of soap. I then make sure to rinse out the decanter with very hot water and refill and rinse six to seven times to ensure there is no soapy residue. About every 8th to 10th time I clean the decanter, I use a Polident capsule (‘Yes,’ the denture cleaner!) to remove any slight build-up of red wine film. However, the Polident capsule will leave a minty taste to it which could effect the taste of the next bottle decanted unless you make sure the decanter is perfectly cleaned. Therefore, after using the Polident to remove any film build-up, I wash out the decanter as usual with soap and rinsing it out six or seven times, and then I repeat the process in its entirety again.
I never put my Riedel glasses in the dishwasher as I have a concern that the dishwasher may break or in some way damage them. I know there are newer, nicer dishwashers in the Miele line that are Riedel-safe and that is great! I plan on buying one when I move into our own apartment unit. In my current rental unit, I wash my Riedel glasses by hand. I have been careful to wash the wine glasses first before using the washing implements to wash other dishes as the washing implements may contain more food particles or greasy or oily residue. However, I was not as careful and forgotten to do this with my drying towels!
But the glass I used and cleaned yesterday definitely had an odor inside the glass when I put my nose to it. I tried to think what had happened and why it had a slight odor. I often clean and rinse my wine glasses and turn them upside down to dry. However, I make sure to turn them right-side-up quickly so as to not trap any odor in the globe. Then I dry them with a drying towel.
The problem was that my drying towel was over-used from having cleaned dishes the last few days and had built up some food odors on the towel. Therefore, when drying the Riedel glass, I transferred some of the food odors to the glass causing it to smell. I always sniff an empty glass before use and you should too. While rare, this was one time where I had failed to clean and dry the glass properly and it could have caused my otherwise great glass of 1998 Tyrrell’s Vat 9 Shiraz to be less than perfect due to the odor in the glass.
I never store my glassware upside down on a shelf as the rim of the glass will be sealed by the shelf. If there is any bacteria inside the glass, it can multiply and leave a poor odor in the glass, especially if it is sitting for weeks or longer. Therefore, I always store my glassware right-side up to allow it to breathe. I do so inside a closed cabinet so the glasses will not collect dust. The ideal way to store glasses is upside down (to eliminate any possibility of dust), but by hanging it by the base (see above picture). This requires you to install a rack to slip the base of the glass into. While this is the best way to store wine glasses, it does require you to buy and install the rack. This is not hard, but based on your living conditions, it may be difficult to find an area to mount the wine glass rack and store the glasses. I just keep mine inside the pantry (see below).
Make sure your wine glasses are:
Cleaned properly;
Dried properly; and
Stored properly
Otherwise, your drinking experience will be less than satisfactory, even with the right Riedel glass and wine!
My taste in Chardonnay has certainly changed over the years. I used to drink and enjoy a fresh, crisp Chardonnay, and moving to Australia, I initially almost exclusively favored the Chardonnays from Margaret River (such as the Leeuwinn Estate Art Series and Pierro). However, after trying some of the Hunter Valley Chardonnays I was amazed at how good they were and right in my own backyard! The Two Rivers Chardonnay from the Upper Hunter is one of the best valued Chardonnays you can find. Tamburlaine makes a very nice organic Chardonnay, but it is really the aged Chardonnays from Tyrrells and Waverley Estate that I find the most amazing. Among the very best are the Tyrrell’s 2006 Vat 47 (and almost any other vintage of the Vat 47!) and the 2000 Waverley Estate Chardonnay.
But then about 3 years ago, I had my first Montrachet and have never looked (or snifted) back! It was a bottle of the 2007 La Belle Voisine Chassagne Montrachet and I picked up 18 bottles at $140 per bottle. It is quite easy to spend $1,000 for a bottle of Montrachet if you have both the money and the inclination. I don’t! However with the 2007 La Belle Voisine as the standard, I have tried a few Puligny Montrachets for about $75 per bottle and have been disappointed. Then while in the US last year, we bought a bottle of the 2008 Bouchard Peres & Fils Puligny Montrachet Grand Vin De Bourgogne. It was tremendous!
When we returned to Australia, I checked to see if we could get some of this great wine here, but found out we needed to order it from France, and there was no more 2008 to be had. However, since 2009 was. by all claims. a better vintage anyway in Puligny, we took a chance and bought a dozen for $75 per bottle. This bet paid off and the 2009 was even better than the 2008. And the other reason this bet paid off is that a year later, the bottle is selling for about $175!
This wine is rich and complexity with a bit of acid and sharpness to it balanced by the flavor of sweet honey. This is a truly outstanding wine! I expect this wine can cellar for another 3 – 5 years, but I will not find out as I do not have the discipline to let it sit that long! I am on my second bottle and will drink my third bottle a week from now when we have a reunion of my great project team from a previous assignment. But tonight we are finishing off the wine with some leftover beef strogonof.
And of course as you can see from the picture, this wine will be truly enjoyed in my Riedel Montrachet glass!
Surprisingly, the post on Wyndham Estate Wine and Chocolate Masterclass is the oldest post of the three, but still generating regular viewing. This may be because it is linked to and visible from the Wyndham Estate Facebook page.
Each post is currently within two views of each other. It is interesting to see how and when people view different posts and try to understand “why?”. I was surprised to find out that almost half of the more recent views being directed to SAZ in the Cellar come from the “Stumble Upon” website, more so than from Network Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
There are a lot of fascinating principles underpinning the success of social media and I am just starting to figure out some of them and also to be surprised by and learn from others!
I love my drinking experiences, regardless if it’s wine, coffee or tea, and the glass makes all the difference. The wrong glass with a great wine can choke it in terms of diminishing it’s bouquet, or splashing the wine to the wrong place on your tongue. Why is this important? For starters, the tongue location differs in terms of being able to sense sweet, bitter, acidic tastes. In general:
The tip of the tongue detects sweetness
The inner sides of the tongue detect sourness and / or acidity
The outer sides of the tongue detect saltiness
The back of the tongue detects bitterness and / or alcohol
It was about ten years ago when I walked into a bottle shop to pick up some decent Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz. When checking out, I was approached by one of the bottle shop clerks to ask if I would like to sample some wines from different Riedel glasses. My immediate reaction was “Leave me alone! I am spending my money where it is most important – on the wine!” He was quite confident that I would be able to discern a noticeable difference due to the glass, so I decided to take the challenge, if nothing else, just to prove him wrong!
I tried the Cabernet Sauvignon in the Shiraz glass and the Shiraz in the Cabernet Sauvignon glass and then switched them around. My cursing was audible as I could definitely smell the difference and the enjoyment factor was enhanced when having the right wine being ‘nosed’ in the right glass. Then I tasted each combination and was sold. The reason for the cursing was that I knew I would be shelling about $400 for Riedel glasses (my first set of many!) But make no mistake, for someone who loves their wine, you can tell the difference and it does enhance the drinking experience. And aesthetically, the beauty of looking at and holding a perfectly balanced glass adds further to the pleasure!
For a great blog on what Riedel glass to drink with what wine, see the blog Confessions of a Wino by Alastair Bathgate The post provides very useful information on which range to select and what glasses within the range to select. I agree entirely with Confessions of a Wino’s assessment that the best style to pick from is the Vinum. I also agree with his basic selection glass types as being suitable to cover most wines in your cellar. However, for me, with the amount of great Australian Shiraz I drink, I need to have the Riedel Vinum Shiraz glass also, and I have the Riedel Vintage Port glass for the occasional port when late night reading. But Alistair is absolutely correct in that you can go overboard if not careful. Each Riedel glass is between $25 and $40 in the Vinum range and higher for the Sommelier range.
Why does the shape of the glass make a difference? The first reason is the shape (overall size of the globe and opening at the top) influences the concentration of bouquet as you ‘nose’ the wine. This is an important initial part of the wine drinking pleasure. And secondly, the shape and diameter of the globe and the tightness or wideness of the opening determines where the wine is most likely to end up on your tongue and in your mouth. As mentioned above, this can have a huge impact on the tasting experience and what types of flavors you are experiencing.
I also have a set of the O Riedel glasses which are the same shape globes, but without the stems for easier transport. I avoided getting these for a long time as I did not find stemless glasses to be aesthetically pleasing. But after too many bad restaurant experiences (regardless if it was a BYO or not) which did not have proper wine glasses, I felt compelled to bring my own. I am really glad I do now, but you need to be careful when picking up the Pinot Noir and Montrachet glasses as they are very wide and difficult to hold onto to, especially after a bit to drink!
But it is not just my wine drinking that is influenced by great glassware. My coffee drinking also benefits from it. There is one large difference though between wine and coffee for me. I do not drink wine to get drunk. I drink wine for the flavor and the manner in which it enhances an eating and social experience. While I also drink coffee for the taste and pleasure, I additionally drink it for the caffeine and ‘perk-me-up!’ Therefore, I can really enjoy my first coffee of the day even if it is in a cardboard or Styrofoam cup! Yet, if I am making it at home or work (which I usually do 95% of the time), I use glasses made by Nespresso Citiz.
The Nespresso Citiz glasses cost quite a bit. The “Lungo” glass viewed to the right costs about $18. The “Expresso” size is a little less and the “Latte” size a little more. Yet, this is not much for something I use several times most days of the year!
The glasses are double insulated, keeping the coffee hot while protecting my hands from getting warm. Additionally, the beauty of seeing the coffee parabolically shaped adds significantly to the aesthetic experience.
Bodum makes a line of see-through glassware similar to Citiz, and at about one-third the price, but they are not as nice in terms of balance and feeling when being held, and have a plainer design and etching. Yet, they still provide a beautiful see-through experience and have double insulation.
My glassware is worth it in terms of enhancing my drinking experiences, and I would not do without! If you plan to spend money on good wine and good coffee, spend a little extra on good glassware. It is most definitely worth it!
