A chilling spoof. I laughed WAY harder than this deserves, but then again I'm easily amused.

Popularity: 7% [?]

If you have ever wondered if you were missing something when you heard someone say a wine "has great minerality," then you are not alone. It used to be one the more trendy buzzwords in wine, but it has lost some luster because it has been attacked from all sides as being impossible to quantify or prove. As far as I am concerned, "minerality" is a useful descriptor for aromas and flavors, but only insofar as it can convey the perception of an appealing, non-fruit-derived quality.

There is a sense of unease surrounding minerality (hence the attacks) specifically regarding how it gets into a wine, and what exactly it is. I have a natural acceptance of this kind of mystery, so I am content to let the answers come as they may. Many, many people, however, have long been and continue to be minerality deniers, writing it off as the flights of fancy from exuberant and self-righteous wine writers. I wonder if these folks are impatient for answers. Just spend some time surfing wine blogs and you'll find more missives obviously borne of insecurity than anyone should have to endure on such an esoteric topic. This is too bad, because it's only a drink.

Anyway...since minerality is a commonly-used term, it is worth understanding it.

What Minerality Is...And What It Is Not
Minerality is a non-fruit-oriented notion a taster detects in a wine's aroma or flavor:

In the AROMA: any scent that your nose will immediately recognize as normally non-consumable, such as chalk, slate, silicate (like mica), calcium (like limestone), flint, or petroleum. When accompanied by ripe and succulent fruit aromas, these notions are quite attractive and usually the more pronounced and intense the minerality, the more mouthwatering the scent.

In the FLAVOR: a non-sweet, non-fruity, non-bitter quality that can be a component of a wine's flavor, usually expressed through shades of salty, savory, and/or sour flavors. For example, if a wine seems to have a rocky quality to the flavor, and this reminds you of the way the quartzite-laced flower bed behind your childhood home smelled (taste and smell are so closely intertwined) after a warm rain, then you've hit on it.

From Whence Minerality?
Does quartzite in the soil actually get into the vines and therefore our wine? This isn't fully known, but so far the evidence does not support the idea that a vine metabolizes soil-based minerals, thereby enriching the grapes with their essences so that we can taste them. However, plant biology still has too many dark recesses that are as yet unexplored for us to know conclusively what is happening. As any good erstwhile Liberal Arts student (and I am--the University of Chicago drubbed this into me!) would do, I'll wait until we know more before I decide that vines do not directly transmit the flavors of certain minerals in the soil, because I suspect this will be politicized for some time to come, and people will fall on one side or the other, probably even when the evidence is finally overwhelming in one way or another. This won't have the impact that Evolution has had on society, but it would spice things up if it were similarly controversial.

For now, the provenance of minerality remains beneath some stone unturned.

Popularity: 2% [?]

John Cleese takes the bull by the horns in this admirable program. I am not generally inclined to share long videos in this setting, but this is entertaining and edifying (if you want it larger, hover over the video and click on the full-screen icon in the upper right-hand corner).

Popularity: 2% [?]

It's time to clean our basement. It is a naturally cool space that is conveniently damp thanks to the hydrostatic pressure applied by the hillside that rises behind our house, so naturally I have stashed my wine there. I have a fair amount of wine, some of which is neatly stored in racks. The rest of it is stacked rather haphazardly in front of the racks, which is sort of impractical, but there's precious little space to choose from, so there they sit.

This is, of course, the problem. The state of our basement--for which my wife (wisely) refuses to take responsibility--has become a 'situation' because I couldn't find the wine that I wanted to have with dinner. This is not the first time this has happened, but the results were certainly the most outré.

Needle in a Case Stack
I had just served linguine with a Gorgonzola cream sauce with peas and figs, and my wife said to me, "It seems like we should have a bottle of white wine with this." Oooh!!! Throwing down the gauntlet! Of course I was embarrassed that I hadn't thought of this, so I headed for the basement to try to regain my dignity. I wanted a Viognier, but the challenge was finding one. I thought I knew where the Viogniers lived, but after digging through 12 cases of assorted wines (food's getting cold!), the only thing I could actually lay my hands on that seemed appropriate was Alsatian Pinot Gris. Despite being the biggest enthusiast of Alsatian wine I know, I just didn't want that (I have had LOTS of it recently...). So I went with a Chardonnay, which might have been okay had it been a Monterey Chard with a butterscotch thing going on flavor-wise, but no...it was Chablis.

Even if You Believe Hard Enough, You're No Less Wrong than "We'll Be Welcomed as Liberators"
It was a bottle of Verget 2004 Chablis. This was wrong. I knew it was wrong. Chablis would never have occurred to me under any other circumstance. Chablis is, by nature, tensile and minerally, which was not right for the Gorgonzola cream. But I suspended my own disbelief and sought some credible way of shoehorning the choice into place by rationalizing that the Jean-Marie Guffens (the man behind Verget) treatment (which yields a cool creaminess) would help it out. Any help this style of wine making may have made was negated by vivid clarity brought by the 2004 vintage, which energized most white Burgundies beautifully (the reds have not fared so well).

It was delicious wine, no question, and it didn't ruin the food, but it didn't really work, either. It became a little black peppery, which was not the flavor I was seeking. My wife put it well: "It's on the edge of clashing, but it still makes my mouth water." Yes indeed--perfect description.

A Viognier, on the other hand, would have really been lovely, and when I finally found one the next day, it provided a delicious lift to the leftovers.

...I Meant to Do that!
Coincidentally AND ironically, the Chablis was a success with our dessert: we had M&M Bars that I made with my children (essentially Toll House pan cookies made with M&Ms instead). The moment I took a bite, I knew that the Chablis would work, and it was indeed an extraordinary companion. Ha! Redeemed right at the end! .

Of course I planned it all along....

Popularity: 9% [?]

I've done this--it's a great way to get into the bottle. And as you can see, even when you've already been drinking heavily, you can do it. It would be better to do this with a filtered or otherwise sediment free wine....

Popularity: 3% [?]

We consumed a ridiculous amount of wine over the holidays. There were many, many people around to drink with us, so the wine covered lots of ground and it stayed pretty peaceful. I toyed with the idea of writing about each "wine day," but I thought better of it when I realized it would lack the requisite cast of characters who get more entertaining by the glass. The wines that we had were great, and I'd like to write about them all (well, not really, but the idea sounded good for a while), but there is one that I can't keep to myself--the Ridge Vineyards 1993 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet.

My Dad bought the wine in late 1999, and it spent the ensuing decade in a temperature-controlled cellar. It's hard to count on longevity if you don't have a good place to store your wine, but conventional wisdom has it that this particular wine would be lucky to live so long even under the best circumstances. This wine did have something extra going for it in that the '93 growing season produced grapes with higher acids than average, and this no doubt contributed to this wine's long-term prospects.

A Bit of Background
The Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello, the estate's flagship wine, is one of the icons of California wine. It waves the freak-flag of the vintage, as the wine is intended to be an unadulterated expression of the unique qualities of the growing season. It is long-lived and extraordinary wine, and at upwards of $140 a bottle, it had better be! The Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet is the Monte Bello's significantly more affordable companion wine. It is made from unused ("declassified" might be more accurate) Monte Bello fruit along with fruit from another nearby vineyard, and is crafted to be more fruit-forward, which generally involves some significant intrusion from the winemakers. I'd contend that it is a shining example of outstanding winery practices, though, because--interventionist or not--after sixteen years this wine is glorious.

I praise the winery work because there are many wines (from across California...and around the world really, but that's another discussion!) that are made to be fruit-forward (including some $100 Napa Valley wines), which also hold a promise of long-term maturation--according to the winemakers. Such wines, in my experience, rarely follow through. This gem from Ridge does! You'll find the standard drinking suggestion on the label of the Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet (which says it can be drunk immediately but will last for 10-12 years), but the wine way out-performs the prognostication: here we had an old bottle of it that was very exciting, and not even starting to decline. Now I'm going to have to lay my hands on a bottle of '93 Monte Bello! That won't be easy....

I clearly need to buy some more Ridge--probably a single-vineyard Zinfandel this time. Let me know if you have favorites, too.

So here's the low-down on the wine
It started off with some bottle sickness, but this blew-off after about five minutes, revealing fabulous black fruit aromas with both freshness and moodiness. No sign of being "old"--its age shows only in qualities that run much deeper than before...like your high school ex whom you see again after 20 years...their eyes are kinder now...oh, and they look good. Maybe you wouldn't mind getting back into some of that.... Its sensuous, robust aroma is backed-up by a voluptuous mouthfeel and excellent black fruits again, accompanied by a slightly smoky tone that leaves a bit of meaty flavor to the otherwise florally-motivated finish.

Popularity: 6% [?]