In winemaking, “pomace” is?

• A. Rocky soil from the vineyard.
  B. A cake of sediment left after filtering.
  C. Grape skins, seeds and stems after pressing.
  D. An ointment made with grape skins.
• E. Slurry at bottom tank after racking off the clear wine.
   

But scarcity isn’t the only factor in its limited appeal. Its taste profile, while on the one hand able to offer excitement and intrigue for the connoisseur wishing to broaden his palate, can on the other hand provide something of a shock for the uninitiated used to the familiar flavors of Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.

Pale-gold colored in the glass, it provides a chewy, mouth-filling texture low in acidity, combined with a heady, floral aroma. The nose, often exhibiting notes of apricots, peaches, honeysuckle, blossom and rose petals, can deceive as being that of a sweet wine. Yet Viognier is dry and once swallowed, leaves the palate refreshed with a long, savory, mineral aftertaste.

In Condrieu, the Viogniers enjoy a long aging potential and I have always thought they provide a useful, and, in the case of growers such as Paul Jaboulet, good-value addition to a cellar. Outside of Condrieu, they don’t tend to age as well and, as a rule of thumb, it’s advisable to drink them when young, before their distinctive aroma loses some of its punch.

The grape, as well as being an acquired taste, also is quite tricky to grow, winemakers say. It needs plenty of sun and is also susceptible to the fungal disease powdery mildew that can destroy the aroma compounds in grapes and leave them smelling slightly of mould.

Despite this, the grape variety has been undergoing something of a resurgence in recent years. I was reminded of this during a recent lunch with Chris Bonsall, current chairman of The International Wine and Food Society, the august institution founded in 1933 by the great gourmet and historian André Simon. Mr. Bonsall informed me that he had recently been enjoying Australian Viognier. His recommendation was Haan Prestige Viognier 2005 from Tanunda in South Australia. Moreover, he added that the grape variety was experiencing something of a revival in Australia, where the wines didn’t have the aging potential of Condrieu but more than made up for it in fruit and character. Intrigued, I made a note to unearth some Australian Viognier, only to find out that it wasn’t just Australia that is planting Viognier. A quick search led me to examples in South Africa, the Mendoza valley in Argentina and throughout Chile. In California, Bob Lindquist at Qupé blends it with Chardonnay to some effect. I have also tasted it blended with Riesling, which gives it a zesty kick. So I organized a mini tasting to see how it compares with those grown in the northern Rhône.

What immediately struck me was the overwhelming distinctiveness of these wines. Rather like Riesling or, indeed, Muscat they provide a unique taste. Undoubtedly summer wines, given the floral notes I have described earlier, they are perhaps best paired with lighter salads, cold, lightly flavored seafood or dishes with an Asian influence. My personal favorite would be Viognier paired with lightly flavored curries, sushi and certain cheeses such as warmed Camembert spread on a hunk of bread.

One Viognier that stood out for its immediate, fruit-forward appeal was Anakena’s Viognier from the Rapel Valley in Chile. Anakena is a relative newcomer to the international wine scene. The winery is the brainchild of Chilean entrepreneur Felipe Ibáñez and former Wines of Chile President Jorge Gutiérrez. Its first vintage was in 2001 after the vines were planted in 1999. I visited the winery, which sits in the foothills of the Andes in 2005 and found it to be winemaking on a very modern scale. Not only was it kitted out with everything one would expect in a brand new winery such as stainless fermentation tanks, but back then winemaker Gonzalo Pérez also was analyzing soil types and climatic readings obtained from satellites. They used this information to decide which vines were best matched to which soil types. It seemed a long way from the villages of the northern Rhône, where white grape varieties such as Grenache Blanc, Marsanne and Rolle have been cultivated for centuries.

By: Will Lyons [The Wall Street Journal 08/06/10]

Much theatrical posturing ensued in which the sommelier flamboyantly sniffed the cork before pouring himself a tasting measure of the wine in question and, after tasting, confidently declared to the table: “This is not corked.” I had to agree but took no pleasure in watching my friend’s expression crumple. I can’t remember whether he actually brought himself to drink the aforementioned bottle, but I do recall enjoying the wine very much.

The problem with identifying wine faults such as cork taint, oxidation, sediment and tartrate crystals or brettanomyces (a subject I will return to later) is that more often than not there is no fault with the wine at all. It just doesn’t taste quite how the drinker expected it to. Take our “earthy” Italian wine. If one is used to a softer, approachable, supple form of wine such as an Australian Merlot instead of the bitter, tannic and dry flavor of an Italian grape variety such as Nebbiolo, then naturally the Italian wine can come as a bit of a shock to the palate.

Similarly, when a wine is served with small pieces of cork floating inside the glass, it isn’t actually corked, it is just that the cork has crumbled and fallen into the glass. These may seem basic rules to some but I wager right now there is someone beckoning the sommelier over, arguing that there are small bits floating on his wine and he will under no circumstances drink “corked wine.”

So how does one identify corked wine? Firstly, it is worth pointing out that in the U.K. this is becoming less of a problem as more wine producers are reverting to screwcaps. Unfortunately for those wines bottled with a cork, there are still corks that are contaminated with TCA, a chemical compound 2,4,6-trichloroanisole that gives the wine an unmistakable pungent, mouldy odor.

By far a more common fault, in my experience, is the wine that has been ruined through oxidation. This is when a small amount of air has seeped in through the cork, leaving the wine smelling “sherried” or without any discernible fruit characteristics. Rarer these days, but still prevalent in some wines, is the occurrence of opening a bottle to find it is “off,” displaying a foul-smelling nose. When I worked in the wine trade a few years back, I learned that this was because of the wine being contaminated by bacteria left over in the winery.

Sediment collected at the bottom of a wine glass can be unpleasant to drink but is entirely natural and expected in wines that are aged. Decanting the wine should avoid this experience. Small tartrate crystals that appear in white wine are also nothing to worry about; they form naturally in the winemaking process.

One fault beloved of wine snobs is that of “brett,” or brettanomyces, to give it its full name. Hugely controversial, brett is a yeast that imparts a distinctive flavor to a wine, best described in my experience as a sort of smoky bacon flavor. It is found predominantly in red Bordeaux, and for many the taste actually improves the wine, adding complexity and character. Those who don’t like the taste, and there are many, often say that it is a result of bad winemaking.

But as Master of Wine Anthony Barne says: “It is a taste that is almost endemic in older clarets and one we all came to know and love as part of the taste of red Bordeaux.

“If you go back 20 years, it was really the Australians who were perhaps more scientific winemakers then the Bordelais were in general. They had identified brett as what they considered to be a wine fault, and then they were finding it in a lot of clarets and were always looking for an angle as to why Australian wines were superior to French wines. But unless it is really strong, I don’t see it as a huge problem, I must say.”

A view echoed by Simon Staples, sales director at Berry Bros. & Rudd wine merchants, who says, “It’s a fault I rarely come across and if I had to be honest, if you mention it, I don’t think most people know what you are talking about.” Which is precisely why the wine snobs love it so much.

By: Will Lyons [The Wall Street Journal 8/20/10]

A: It’s best to keep the wine bottle corked while you’re on an antibiotics regimen, says pharmacist Richard Harkness. You can’t predict how your body may react. Alcohol can interfere with the absorption of erythromycin or the efficacy of doxycycline, for example. With certain antibiotics or antifungals–like cefoperazone (Cefobid), ketoconazole (Nizoral), metronidazole (Flagyl), and tinidazole (Tinda_max)–even a sip of alcohol may lead to flushing, nausea, abdominal cramps, headache, low blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, and shortness of breath.

Source: Health.msn.com

July 6, 2010, 7:38 pm

The Role of the Sommelier

Are you naturally suspicious of sommeliers, wine shops and restaurants? Do you believe that given the chance they will try to take advantage of you, to sell you something you don’t want, make you spend more than you had planned and, worst of all, help themselves to what is rightfully yours?

Well, maybe you don’t feel this way, but some people do. Such suspicions fuel some of the negative reactions toward the practice in some restaurants of having sommeliers taste the wines diners have ordered before serving them to the table.

Suspicions are not the only reason some people object to this practice. Others feel they are the best judges of whether a wine is flawed or not, and do not appreciate sommeliers appropriating their role.

Personally, I don’t mind it at all. Who, after all would be more familiar with the wines on a restaurant list than the sommelier? I can imagine several scenarios where a sommelier might be better equipped to recognize a flawed bottle than I would.

For example, consider the fact that, while obviously corked bottles may be easy to detect, slightly corked bottles reveal themselves not so much through off aromas but by muting a wine’s natural fragrance and flavors. I might not notice this, but a sommelier, who theoretically at least knows what a wine is supposed to smell like, would presumably recognize the difference.

As for usurping the role of the judge, I don’t believe this is the case at all. Just because sommeliers taste the wine does not mean they have the final say in the matter. They must still present the bottle to the table and offer a taste to a guest, who may reject the bottle for countless reasons. A sommelier, believing the bottle is not flawed, may suggest in turn allowing the wine to breathe for a few minutes, or cooling it, or even decanting it. But ultimately, the guest is the final arbiter. If a table rejects a bottle, that must be accommodated.

This is occasionally where trouble comes up. A sommelier, insufficiently trained, may choose to argue the matter. Bad idea! A good bottle that’s been rejected can always be used for something else. The wine can be sold by the glass, or it can be served to the staff as a training exercise. But a guest who has had a confrontation will never return, and that will cost the restaurant a lot more in the long run.

Call me a sunny optimist, but I firmly believe that good sommeliers want nothing more than to make sure their customers enjoy the best possible experience. I don’t mind putting myself in their hands.

Of course, the operative word is “good.” I see a significant difference between a good, well-trained sommelier, and somebody who was put in charge of wine because they are enthusiastic about it. But restaurants that are serious about wine take wine service seriously as well. And if part of that service includes a sommelier taking a minuscule amount of wine to insure that it is sound, well, that’s alright by me.

Eric Asimov is the wine critic for the Times.

When the First Sip Is the Sommelier’s, Not Yours

By ERIC ASIMOV

Published: July 6, 2010

STEPHEN SILBERLING, a tax lawyer who considers himself a knowledgeable wine drinker, could not contain his astonishment as he told me of his recent experience in a New York restaurant. He had ordered a 2007 Chapoutier Côtes du Rhône Belleruche, a wine he and his date had enjoyed so much the previous week that they decided to drink it again. As they sipped their first glass, however, they both thought the wine tasted different, and they debated whether it was flawed.

Listening to the conversation, the sommelier piped up.

“He said, ‘I’ve tasted the wine, it’s fine,’ ” Mr. Silberling recalled. “He tasted the wine? I was very surprised. I had never heard of that being done before.”

Few issues of wine etiquette seem to cause as much consternation as the increasingly common practice of a sommelier taking a small sip of wine, usually unbidden, to test for soundness. Diners often are surprised to learn that their bottle has in effect been shared with the restaurant, even if it’s just the smallest amount.

The practice, which is more common at high-end restaurants with ambitious wine lists, can make diners uncomfortable. Some believe the restaurant may be taking advantage of them by consuming wine that they have bought. Others feel demeaned, that their role of assessing the wine has been usurped.

“I know I’d rather be doing the tasting because I trust myself,” Mr. Silberling said.

It’s a touchy subject, particularly because, from the restaurant’s point of view, it’s all for the consumer’s benefit. Some restaurants believe that, since they are more familiar than most consumers with the wines they offer, they can save diners from accidentally accepting a bottle that is not up to standard. “I think it’s an important service,” said Daniel Johnnes, wine director for Daniel Boulud’s Dinex Group. “We want the sommelier to assure that the wine gets to the customer as it is intended.”

I have noticed this practice more often in the last decade, but in fact it was one of the original tasks of the sommelier.

“It goes back hundreds of years, when the role of sommeliers was to ensure that kings or royalty didn’t get poisoned,” said Evan Goldstein, a wine educator and former president of the American chapter of the Court of Master Sommeliers, an organization dedicated to raising the standards of beverage service. “My understanding is that the tastevin was put on a chain and put around the neck of the sommelier exactly for that purpose.”

Ah, the tastevin, the shallow silver cup that today largely evokes the image of the supercilious sommelier. In the United States, where most restaurants have tried to relax the formality of wine service, one rarely sees a tastevin. Le Bernardin in New York is one of the few that still employs it as a working tool.

“I want to ensure the wine I serve is in perfect condition,” said Aldo Sohm, Le Bernardin’s chef sommelier. “We use it. It’s not just for show.”

Allowing the sommelier a sniff or small taste of a wine is a sensible precaution for a restaurant to take, I think, both from its own point of view and from the customer’s. No good restaurant wants to serve flawed or bad wine, and tasting the wine first is a step toward preventing that.

Many people, even those who know something about wine, are not comfortable suggesting that a bottle is flawed. They might feel uncertain, or embarrassed, and would rather endure a bottle they are not enjoying than send it back. If a sommelier can prevent that, I think it’s worth the sip that’s sacrificed.

At RN74, a top wine-oriented restaurant in San Francisco, sommeliers check every bottle, said Christie Dufault, who is a sommelier there and a wine and beverage instructor at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley. She is still haunted by a southern Rhône wine she once served a table without having tasted it. After they left, having consumed only half the bottle, she checked it and found it was badly corked.

“I’ve seen consumers become way more knowledgeable, but I recommended a wine that was completely foreign to these people,” she said. “They didn’t recognize that the wine was flawed. We don’t want that scenario to ever be repeated.”

Nonetheless, some consumers, even educated ones, are suspicious of the practice.

“I’ve never seen it, and I would say I’m happy I’ve never seen it,” said Joe Roberts, who blogs about wine at 1winedude.com. “I would imagine the first reaction would be, somebody’s trying to cop a taste of my expensive wine.”

Ms. Dufault realizes the practice may require sommeliers to step into delicate territory.

“We want customers to realize that good sommeliers are looking out for their best interests,” she said. “It’s our job to observe our guests. If I observe a guest who really knows wine, then maybe this service isn’t necessary.”

Fred Dexheimer, a master sommelier whose company, Juiceman Consulting, advises restaurants on wine service, believes sniffing and tasting before serving is a sound practice.

“I want the guest to have the best experience possible,” he said. “It’s like a chef making sure all the sauces are correct.”

But Mr. Dexheimer said he has seen the ritual abused by sommeliers who have poured themselves a little more wine than perhaps was necessary. He said sommeliers have to understand that some wines are more prone to problems than others, and therefore are more important to check. He mentioned unfiltered white wines, for example, or wines whose cork might have some visible mold on it. I might add to that list wines like white Burgundies, which are prone to oxidation problems that some consumers may not recognize.

Even if a sommelier has tasted a wine and found it sound, that does not ensure that a customer will like it. So what happens if a sommelier believes a wine has no problem, but the customer rejects it, as was the case with Mr. Silberling?

“The rule is, if the customer is not happy with the wine, take the wine back,” Mr. Johnnes said. “It doesn’t happen so frequently that we can’t do that.”

He suggests engaging in conversation with the customer. It may be that a wine needs to breathe a bit, or needs to be gently cooled. But if those options are not satisfactory, he said, just take the wine back.

Some bottles are obviously flawed, but others can be borderline cases. What is undetectable to some people, even to experts, is off-putting to others. Above all, he said, sommeliers should never argue with customers, even if they believe a bottle is sound.

Mr. Dexheimer remembers doing just that as a young sommelier. “I still have guilty nightmares about that 10 years later,” he said. “Take the rest of that bottle and educate your staff, or pour it by the glass. There are ways to recover from that, but if you make a guest unhappy, you’ll never get that guest back.”

One way of alleviating the mistrust that some customers may feel, he suggested, is simply to alert guests that you, the sommelier, are going to taste the wine to make sure it’s all right.

That would work for Mr. Roberts, the wine blogger. “It would almost go from something that seems malignant to something that’s viewed as good service,” he said.

Communication, Mr. Dexheimer said, is one more way to remove the pretension from wine.

“If you communicate everything you do to the guests, you help to create an atmosphere of trust,” he said. “If you don’t ask permission, you’re going to get in trouble.”

Article was taken from The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/dining/07pour.html?pagewanted=1)

Driftwood Estate Winery Presents: Classical Music Soiree Overlooking the Vineyard July 10th at 8 PM An evening of Music, Wine and a Stunning Sunset The newly formed Classical Musical Ensemble, The Central Texas Chamber Orchestra Conducted by Donald Miller, will be performing at Driftwood Estate Winery in their newly built Pavilion. The Orchestra will be playing Mozart Symphony Number Forty, String Serenade by Antonin Dvorak as well as other classical pieces. The Central Texas Chamber Orchestra is composed of eighteen local musicians with impressive resumes. The concert will begin at 8 PM and the Orchestra will perform for 1 hour and 45 minutes including an intermission. With your ticket, Driftwood Estate Winery is providing fine cheeses that pair well with wine. Wine may be purchased by the glass or bottle. Check In will begin at 7 PM. Ticket Price: $30 per person ~ Limited Seating All Ticket Sales are Final – purchase tickets on the website to follow.

For more information, visit DriftwoodVineyards.com

On the left you will find the alphabetical list of the wineries that are part of this growing association. And for more information please visit:

Another lovely evening in the company of friends, and surrounded by amazing food and good drinks; thank you again Brittashton for the invitation. Also thank you Ivan C, Toncia C, and Victor M for joining and being there!

Our first course was a spicy shrimp wrapped in bacon with a light salad. It was paired with a mango-cilantro ‘rita!

Second course was a refreshing mango salad, with cheese, pine nuts and grapes, quite delish, it was paired with a pineapple paloma cocktail.

My entrée was a super spicy snapper, quite hot and tasty, served with calabazita and potatoes, and a light jicama salad. The food was paired with a raspberry chipotle cocktail.

Lastly,  a fresh berry and Chantilly margarita, paired with an astonishing blackberry cocktail.

Overall, we tasted Tres Generaciones, Blanco,  Reposado and Añejo.

I certainly look forward to the next one! Salud!!