My in-laws are visiting from Germany, and that seemed like a good reason to check the progress of all of the vintage 2009 wines in the shower. I pulled 100 mL samples from various carboys for a taste. We started with the Fallbrook syrah. This wine already has great aromas with big fruit and good [...]
Tag archive: tasting note
I got an email today from Mike Hoffman that the syrah started veraison and harvest should be around the first week of September. Hopefully there won’t be a last-minute heat wave like last year, which raisined a lot of the grapes before we could pick them for wine. I’ll need to start thinking about what [...]
I entered two wines into the San Diego County Fair Homemade wine competition: ‘Bahia Belle’ Bordeaux Blend, a 50/50 blend of cabernet sauvignon and merlot made from fresh grapes, and ‘Sail Bay Sundown’ RJ Spagnols Argentinian Trio Limited Release white blend. One of my fellow winemakers also entered the same cabernet sauvignon and merlot as [...]
Since we were talking about our barrel wines while pruning yesterday, I wanted to check the progress of the 2008 merlot. It wasn’t as clear as I wanted when I bottled it, and so I wanted to check if it was OK, or if I needed to open them all and let the solids settle [...]
Most of the east coast is blanketed in snow today. Meanwhile, we finally got our southern California sunshine back — just in time to prune the syrah vines at Live Oak Vineyard. Mike Hoffman gave us a short tutorial on pruning for his vineyard; he already cut off the bulk of the canes, so we [...]
It’s been 6 months since I touched my “La Jolla Caves” Winexpert Montagnac Vieux Chateau d’Oc, wanting to give it time to come together better. Now it’s at the 2-year mark, which sounds like a good time to test it out. I did not decant this time, I wanted to see how it developed out [...]
I’ve been looking for an excuse to open my 2008 Winexpert Limited edition Chilean carmenere, and Moroccan Braised Beef (recipe courtesy of Chef Jenn Felmley!) sounded like just the ticket. Today is just short of 2 years in the bottle. I decanted about an hour. There is some foam, but not too bad. Slight soapiness on the [...]
I got an email from Dave today, he and Paul checked out the merlot and petite sirah on Friday. Since this is our second year in the barrel, neither wine is very oaky yet. By this time last year the wine in the barrels had much more oak. The petite sirah is a little more [...]
We opened the 2007 “Overlook Heights” Cabernet-merlot tonight, the first wine I made. Two and a half years later, this wine has come together really nicely. Very smooth, no more foam! Yummy aromas of dark fruit and cocoa, with juicy flavors of plum, black cherry, and blueberry with hints of spice and milk chocolate. Unfortunately, [...]
Since we are four tonight, I decided it was finally time to do a head-to-head comparison of 2008 Mosti Mondiale Chianti with the 2009 WE Chianti. Overall, both tasted very similar; very basic, clean, nice table wines. We tasted alone and with a spinach salad with blue cheese, toasted walnuts, and balsamic vinaigrette. Both wines [...]