Cupboard Crawling

Fancy a fancy glass?


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Spill the Wine

I could feel the hot flame of fire roaring in my back as she disappeared. But soon, she returned. In her hand was a bottle of wine; in the other, a glass. She poured some of the wine from the bottle into the glass, and raised it to her lips, and just before she drank, she said, "Spill the wine, dig that girl".

War was a great band, and I've always loved lyrics that made absolutely no sense to me–it removes the burden of understanding a song so I can concentrate on humming the tune. But sometimes you have to pay attention, or pay the piper. In my case, the piper got his due.

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Cellar Dweller

Behold, my mighty new cellar unit!

Some of my kind readers wrote to remind me that I promised another instalment in my series on cellaring. There is a reason why it's taken me three months to come back to the topic. I forgot. But on the bright side, I'm moving closer to that diagnosis of attention deficit dis . . . hey, you should see my new cellar!

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The $20,000 Cup of Coffee

For twenty grand I want 3 sugars and four creams

I will be the first to admit that I have occasionally indulged in excess in my personal life. I once paid $200 for two two-ounce glasses of wine. I own some wineglasses that cost a day's pay–each. I've eaten my own weight in foie gras. Heck, I even paid fifteen bucks for a single cup of coffee, once. But there comes a point where the spirit of adventure, the desire for novelty and the idealism of a sensualist run flat into a big ol' case of the stupids. Viz, the $20,000 coffee maker.

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Seeing the Forest for the Trees

Getting nicely toasted: barrels under construction

Counting the Cost, Part II: A large barrel

Is the answer then to use a 227 litre (60 US gallon) barrel? Maybe. Certainly the ratio of surface area to volume is a lot more conducive to long term storage of wine. A 227 litre barrel has about 80 square centimetres of oak exposure per litre of wine. At that rate you will only probably need two batches of wine to season it in the first year; some top wineries use new oak barrels every year for their premium wines. The drawbacks include the fact that you're going to have to make 227 litres of one wine variety on hand every time you want to fill the barrel. Your variety will be limited. Also this barrel, as much as any other, will need to be kept full at all times. When you want to bottle your wine you must have another 227 litres of one kind of wine ready to go.

So Who's Dumb Enough to Use Oak Barrels?

It's beginning to look like no one in their right mind would ever want to use a barrel. Rest easy. The barrel is without doubt the finest way to impart a quality oak flavour to your wine–you just have to be sure you're ready to keep it fed and happy. This may involve purchasing a barrel with a friend or a group of friends. That way you'll not only split the costs, you also won't have 225 litres of one kind of wine. If you aren't sure whether barrels are right for you, talk it over with your local wine-making shop and get a couple of books that discuss barrels. Desmond Lundy's Handmade Table Wines has a good section on barrels, Daniel Pambianchi's Techniques in Home Winemaking has a great section covering both barrels and oak use, and Thomas Bachelders' You Made This? (sadly not in print at this time) has an excellent discussion of barrel use. For a dissenting opinion on whether oak barrels are suitable for consumer winemaking, check out Okanagan Barrel Works. Cal has been selling, repairing and re-furbishing barrels for years, and has some great information on his site.

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Over a Barrel

Lost in the wood: barrel cellar

For many folks nothing says quality like the scent of vanilla, toast and wood coming off of a glass of wine. Others (like me) think there can easily be too much of a good thing. I'm constantly chiding people about drinking 'Chateau Plywood' or 'Splinter Cellars'. For me, the grapes should provide the tannin and structure for a wine, and oak should be like a condiment—I'm not interested in ketchup as a main course.

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Meet the Tim

Lost in the wood: barrel cellar

For many folks nothing says quality like the scent of vanilla, toast and wood coming off of a glass of wine. Others (like me) think there can easily be too much of a good thing. I'm constantly chiding people about drinking 'Chateau Plywood' or 'Splinter Cellars'. For me, the grapes should provide the tannin and structure for a wine, and oak should be like a condiment–I'm not interested in ketchup as a main course.

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The Grapes of Math

Bubble, bubble toil and trouble . . .

Whitman said, 'Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.' I have to admit, I'm a lot larger than Whitman, although I'm on the other side of temperance from him and look less like Gandalf. No, my contradiction lies in my devotion to traditional thinking about wine and the expression of grapes while working in the winemaking industry at a time of unparalleled scientific research and technological development. I'm particularly bemused by the level of manipulation that a lot of wines get--things like alcohol reduction, micro-oxygenation, polyphenol fractionation, etc.

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Alcohol By Volume: Just How Loud is Your Wine?

Molotov Cocktail - AP Photo

In the last couple of decades I've heard nearly every concern or complaint about wines that consumers have fermented at home. I've heard some doozies, along with some that are just puzzling.

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Mo Money, Mo Bettah

Expensive = good? Why do you think people buy Mercedes?

I spend a lot of time yapping about wine criticism: whether it's whining about the treatment kit wine gets from the press, or how certain wine critics have the palate of children, I'm concerned that critics with loud voices aren't truly engaged enough to think critically about what's in their glass. In particular, I've often found that people who are dismissive and overtly critical of the very concept of kit wine (which is made exactly the same way [both in our winery and in the homes of you the consumer] with exactly the same ingredients [grapes] and exactly the same process [fermentation] as commercial wine) are fuddled by the idea that the raw materials cost between three and five bucks a bottle, and can't take it seriously.

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A Smashing Case of Sparkling Wine

US Senator Susan Collins, christening the USS Farragut--domestic or imported?

Whenever I think of smashing champagne bottles, I remember an old-timey black and white newsreel of a perplexed looking queen belting the hull of a ship with an apparently indestructible bottle of champagne, over and over again. Classic!

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Wine Criticism

Reading is fun, Maurice Sendak

I do an awful lot of reading in my job. Ten or twenty wine websites, at least half a dozen blogs every day, magazines and a lot of books. After all one can only drink so much wine, but you can read about it (and talk about it) without end.

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Wine--Good For What Ails You?

What's that thumping noise?

It's no small coincidence that in many cultures the form for toasting with a drink translates as 'To Your Health'. For millennia wine was the physicians principal tool, as a painkiller, source of potable moisture, and antiseptic for wounds (the bible has the parable of the good Samaritan who bathed the stranger's wounds in 'oil and wine'--cutting edge medical treatment in those days).

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New Year's Resolutions

Mmm, carbon

I'm not normally one for making resolutions at the turn of the new year. Typically I'll pledge to drink more, take up smoking, or acquire some other socially unacceptable habit--keeping the bar low helps encourage success, after all.

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What Are You Doing New Years?

Crowd at the 2008 Polar Bear Swim in White Rock

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