Rumblings on wine...episode 19

[David M. Bueker]

Just some thoughts rattling around in my brain...

I don’t need more wine. I really don’t need more wine. So what. Wineries need support. They have lost the restaurant market. That’s huge. I will keep buying until I can no longer afford to. I will stack the stuff in the bathroom closet if necessary.

Laura finally admitted that Champagne is her favorite wine. She had said for years it was Riesling. Saturday, while we drank a bottle of Vilmart, she finally admitted what everyone else already knew. Today a box of Marc Hebrart Brut Rosé showed up. Needless to say she was quite happy.

Zoom tastings have been a lot of fun. I wish I could see everyone in person, but there is no way I would see all the winemakers and wine lovers that I have been able to visit with the last several weeks. This has been a bright spot in the madness.

Non wine related, I missed making bread. Glad to be back at it. I do love toast in the morning.

My first mailing list wine was Ravenswood. Now I am buying Joel Peterson’s Once & Future wines. He’s making Zinfandel from Teldeschi and Old Hill, and Merlot from Sangiacomo. Feels like old times. The new wines are really good.

Everyone told me I had to cut back on wine to lose weight. They were wrong. I had to get food choices and portions under control. I am still drinking wine, and down 30 pounds. The food is different (about 75% vegetarian), but still delicious. Home cooked meals without crap in them are a great benefit of this societal disaster. The local farm has been supplying fresh veggies all winter from their greenhouses.

Johannes Selbach is a gem of a guy. He was so human on the Zoom call last weekend.

Lots more to say. I’ll be back.

[Robin Garr]

Good rumble, David. Keep 'em coming!

Yes, David... please do come back. Interesting thoughts here.
Tom

David, please keep rumbling. Agree on the Zoom tastings; I've listened to almost every Berserker virtual Zoom tasting. Find that YouTube works much better for me. Pause, rewind, take notes, resume.

And on a limited scale, I have bought "unneeded" wine to support several small vintners. Also purchased from my one wine club earlier this year than planned. Vintners can use the support, of course. And sometimes the prices are discounted. But the key point is support of small vintners. I admire them for pursuing the dream.....and times are tough for them.

[David M. Bueker]

One comment on the COVID discounts is that the wineries are probably still getting a better price per bottle than when they sell wholesale. Tack on free shipping, as many do, and it might be a wash.

I don’t need more wine. I really don’t need more wine. So what. Wineries need support.

Well, if you really want to be purely altruistic, I'm sure the wineries would happily take your money as a donation!

(I've actually struggled with the same mix of competing emotions on a smaller scale with our local farmers. Many of them are busier than ever, in part because of the new requirements for social distancing, market pre-packaging, etc. But, they also lost a lot of restaurant business, so I want to keep their business model working! Although I can't stack their products in the closet for too long...)

[Jenise]

Yes, I've been buying too, and don't need it anymore than you do. So every so often I get in the car and deliver gift bottles around the neighborhood.

David, remember that buffoon who told you to "Butt out" in a thread I started? I unfriended him on FB, or thought I did until this week when I realized something didn't take but as of yesterday he's gone for for good. He lives here in my neighborhood. He's a man of limited critical thinking ability, and a huckster. Anything for a buck. He should join a circus (in fact, early in his life, he did).
You may recall that in that thread he hammered me for some jest of Donald Trump--accused me of not caring about the community or having any concern for my fellow man's trevails in this crisis, though how he believed he could deduce that from a meme is anyone's guess.

Well over the weekend he emailed me a link "this is the place I've been buying wine" for some flash sale site. First email I've had from him in maybe 5 years. It offered me $10 discount on my purchase and he did not divulge, though it's obviously true that he gets something like three times that as a reward for signing me up. I wrote back that I'm not buying anything from out of state, "I don't need wine, but I want to help. So if I buy more wine it will only be to support the four independent retailers in this town who are all my friends, or buy winery-direct instate to support both our state economy and winemakers we love." Clueless as always, Mr. Concern wrote back that this flashsale site sometimes sells Washington wines. I responded, "THAT'S NOT HELPING."

So you and I are coming from the same place in our hearts, albeit with slightly different orientations.

I need to sit in on more Zoom or Instagram meetings. Tried twice, both times failed to connect. I don't know what's going wrong, as we're able to Zoom with friends.

Good for Laura.

On that topic, the other day we had some incredible syrahs from Reynvaan and Two Vintners. When I moved here 16 years ago I did not like new world syrahs pretty much at all. I'd gone thru an Aussie phase back in the 90's and when I got over that, I never warmed up to California syrahs and so arrived here in WA in 2003 not planning to be impressed or giving the local stuff much of a chance--until I tasted a 2008 Reynvaan In The Rocks. Meanwhile, I steadfastly continued to worship at the altar of cabernet sauvignon and Bordeaux, while Bill Spohn and Co. in Vancouver were making huge dents in my syrah resistance with aged CdPs. (All the while I loved pinot noir, and that remains unchanged.)

ANYWAY, such was the hypnotic effect of last week's syrahs that it struck me, I mean jaw-on-the-table OMG moment struck me, that maybe, just maybe, I actually prefer syrah to cabernet now. Mentally I think I'm letting my cabs age, but maybe I'm just avoiding them because I reach for syrah more often these days, be it Washington or either end of the Rhone.

But of course we don't always drink red wine. Where we probably drank red 80% of the time 20 years ago, it's now more like 50/50. That tracks a shift in our food preferences, too.

[David M. Bueker]

Syrah is a grape I love, love, love, but it runs in spurts. I'll drink it to the exclusion of all other reds for weeks, then it disappears from the rotation for two months. Not sure why.

My wife would happily drink nothing but champagne, though she definitely loves rieslings and pinot noir too. I've dragged her to 100s of wineries in many different wine regions, and she has a high tolerance for many different wines, which I'm very appreciative of. While she loved the food, people and landscape in Piedmonte, tasting just released Barolos and Barbarescos are the one thing she was not crazy about! The tannins are usually pretty brutal...

I definitely don't need more wine either, but the ability to stop buying seems to be a major theme/issue for most wine lovers. Perhaps the most frequent shared characteristic of all!

I've tried to change my cooking up during the pandemic. I'm getting sick of the 'regular' rotation of meals I make, so am trying new recipes a lot now. So far the wife has given me thumbs up for every new (all vegetarian) recipe I have made so far. I haven't started baking bread yet though: I used to when I was far younger, but not for quite a long time.

Edited to add congratulations on losing all that weight! I think my change to mainly vegetarian foods has also helped me maintain my weight well.