The Final Gear Wine Society

I think most wine you buy at a gas station is pretty inane stuff. Mass market, residual sugar, lack of astringency, easy kid to love. Not like cheap Italian wine :p
 


I picked this up a while ago, but I never got around to posting about it. Generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of chardonnay because they tend to be inconsistent. This particular chardonnay is not aged in oak, and unlike most unoaked chardonnay it isn't aged in stainless steel either. If you've ever had a stainless-aged chardonnay, it has a shallow and metallic taste. This one is aged in concrete casks and shipped in ceramic bottles.

This is one of the most interesting and fun Chardonnays I have had, it's crisp and clean with a smooth finish and it allows the fruit and floral notes to come through. I highly recommend trying it, and at about $20 it's not much of a risk.
 
Stainless and concrete Chards are fucking great, the sad part is you typically have to shell out a little more because oak is a cheap way to dress up cheap fruit. There are some really wonderful Chablis being imported, and lots of great fruit forward new world Chards as well. Thanks for the tip, SS chards and oysters, fuck!
 
So it was just putrid. Yuck.
 
What happened here? Last post more than 2 years ago? That needs to change.

For years I have been concentrating on wine countries as New Zealand, South America or California but recently I have started to look at wines from my home country again, where unbeknownst to the rest of the world a small revolution has taken place for some time now. I know German wine has a (well-deserved) bad reputation in most of the world and the old, horrible stuff is still being made. But in recent years there has been a kind of "revolution of the young ones" with many innovative and energetic approaches to modern wine-making. It's almost a bit like what happened in California - minus most of the crazyness.

Firstly a Pinot Blanc, a Riesling, a Pino Noir Ros?, a red blend, a Muscat and Sauvignan Blanc:

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They originate from a winery that's being lead in the 5th generation and who's current young owners decided to break with tradition and give their wines fancy names as a trademark. They invested heavily in modern machinery and wooden barrels to produce their current product line. I bought them in this "discovery pack" as a set for 50 Euros and all those wines are very recommendable. I very much like their approach on wine drinking and the names on the labels speak for themselves :D

Furthermore I have been buying this Riesling for some time and it's in my opinion up there with the best whites on the market:
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"Deep Roots" has become my standard white wine for all occasions. It's made by three young wine-makers who call themselves "3 Winner". It isn't quite as good as my favourite white wine, though (Cloudy Bay Sauvignan Blanc, which is more fruity and less minerally) but hey, it's a bargain for roughly 10 Euros a bottle.

I admit I'm not a big fan of dry red wines. Maybe some day I will but at the moment I'm not.

However, I'm a sucker for really good sweet reds. My favourite of that sort, a Spanish blend called "Marca Alcantara", has recently gotten competition from another young German winery:
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It's called "Die Freude teilen" (Sharing the joy) and is part of a product line called "Young Poets". I'm planning on buying a complete set of that product line in the nearer future.

All those wines I introduced, fulfill the James May exigence of being "good but inexpensive".

I also recently bought some award-winning Austrian wines but haven't gotten to open a bottle so far. I will report back in when I have.

P.S.: I'm very happy to report that more and more good wine-makers say goodbye to corks and use screw tops or - which I find very intersting - glass tops with a rubber ring that snap in place again, once you removed it.
 
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The Mosel and Pflaz has been making some of the best Riesling in the world for thousands of years. Look for Dr. Loosen or D?nnhoff Rieslings. Pfalz Dornfelder is great too, if you can find an old one.
 
The Mosel and Pfalz has been making some of the best Riesling in the world for thousands of years. Look for Dr. Loosen or D?nnhoff Rieslings. Pfalz Dornfelder is great too, if you can find an old one.

It?s always a question if you like Riesling or not. German winemakers have been successfully tuning and tweaking the Riesling and Riesling-blends in the last couple of decades to make it more interesting and sellable to people who are into wine and not just drink it to get drunk - but it is still Riesling. Which a lot of People seem to dislike as a grape. I personally quite like it ...
 
The Final Gear Wine Society

I experienced how differently grape varieties can taste. Depending on who grows them and how.

Riesling still suffers from the image of 1,99 Euros discounter offers but the Deep Roots I mentioned above is as different from them as a Golf is different from a Yugo.
 
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I experienced how differently grape varieties can taste. Depending on who grows them and how.[...]

yes, the whole french-wine-thing is based on that notion and I know this is true. The where and how have a huge influence on the wine. But it?s a bit like with parents and their children. You get your genes from your parents - but the finished person can still be very different depending on how you are raised. But no matter how different you were raised, the genes will always be there and always "shine through".
It?s like that with wine and grapes. A Riesling grape will be identifiable as a Riesling just like all the other grapes. It?s not just the image (though that is a factor) that keeps people away, it?s the grape. I for example hate syrah* or blends that feature a lot of syrah. I don?t like the taste, the bitterness, the sharpness. And I?ve sampled quite a lot of it because my significant other likes syrah. But whatever shape or form that comes in as a wine - I don?t like it. And it?s the same with Riesling and any other grape - after some time people figure out if they like a certain grape or not, they will stay away. No branding or marketing will change that.

* I quite like Port, which is often made from syrah, but that?s a different story.
 
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Oh, I'm a sucker for Port, too. And Madeira as well. I currently have 7 bottles of a Spanish red called Don Vigando, a Monastrell grape. Tastes a lot like Port but with less alcohol. Yummy
 
Red wine:

Pulling the cork early and allowing a wine to "breathe" is really only for expensive old wine, yes?

Cheapo red plonko and screw-top reds gain no benefit, therefore.

:think:
 
Had this about a week ago, can recommend.
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Oooooooh. We need a Ringmeet wine tour (where someone else drives who isn't ninjacoco)
 
Oooooooh. We need a Ringmeet wine tour (where someone else drives who isn't ninjacoco)

Hmm… if you started in Heidelberg for some touristy stuff, made your way to Speyer for the Technikmuseum (Big planes! Small planes! Yay, planes!) and then drove west to the Palatinate wine region, you’d have a nice few days already. Throw in the banks of the Rhine if you want and have time and funds left.
 
Went to “Glühwein Nacht” at the winery in town. Small place called Badischer Winzerkeller.

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I can recommend if Hot sweet wine is something you like.
 
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