The theme of this month’s club event was Petite Sirah, which meant it was time to pull our pants up, strap ourselves in and prepare for some big time wine.  It’s very interesting how contradictory the name is if you think about it from the taste perspective, however, it’s called Petite because the size of the grapes are much smaller than it’s father, Syrah.  Ampelographically speaking (wow, that’s a big word), Petite Sirah has also been known as Durif, named for the French botanist who developed it, which is a cross between Peloursin and Syrah, as discovered by Dr. Carole Meredith of UC-Davis.  Petite Sirah has been in the U.S. since the late 1880’s, however, Syrah does not appear on the California scene until the 1940-50’s.

The group tasted 7 bottles, blind, with no other criteria other than bring a PS.  I will give notes only on the top 3, but will list the remaining wines at the bottom:

WOTN: 2006 Vina Robles Jardine (Paso Robles) – The color was inky and purple and got some serious heat on the nose, but that is to be expected with PS, as well some nuttiness.  On the palate, I detected licorice/anise, blackberries with strawberries right at the end.  There were medium to high tannins, though not the hairiest of the night.  Overall, very velvety, balanced and delicious from nose to finish.

2005 JC Cellars Frediani (Napa Valley) - Once again, very dark, with a bowl of nuts on the nose and blackberries/black cherries as well as vanilla (the wife thought of whipped cream) on the palate.  This was the BMOC as chewiness goes for the evening… felt like I had shag carpeting on the tongue – awesome!

2006 Greg Norman (Paso Robles) – The nose gave off hints of spice, beef jerky, very meaty.  The taste was primarily black fruit and dark cherries.  I don’t want to be snobby, but I was surprised to see a Greg Norman wine making the top 3, but I cannot deny the signature PS characteristics and great balance of this wine on this particular evening.

It was interesting to see 2 of the best wines were from Paso Robles.  It seems the warm/hot days followed by the cool/breezy evenings of the Central Coast are a great match for this powerful grape.  The other wines were:  2006 Writer’s Block (Lake), 2006 Guenoc (Lake), 2005 Ursa Major (Paso Robles) and 2007 Spellbound (CA)

An honorable mention from a previous post: 2006 Starry Night (Lodi)

On this evening, PS did not disappoint and even picked up a new fan in Angela, the night’s hostess.  For those of you who want to get more into Petite Sirah, visit the PS I Love You site:  http://www.psiloveyou.org/

We are celebrating the start of the third year of our neighborhood wine tasting club.  We call it a wine club, but the fact is we have had tequila and Octoberfest beer tastings as well, so it’s very wide open as to the topic and the main goal is simply to get together with our friends and neighbors and enjoy each other’s company.  Oh, and maybe we learn something new about wine, tequila or beer along the way too. 

One way to meet your resolution to taste more wines this year is to host your own tasting.  We recommend hosting a tasting for anyone looking to try new wines and learn from one another.  It is very easy to do and can be as informal or elaborate as you like.  You can see some examples by going to the Pelly Wine Club pages.

Here are some basics to get started with:

1. Relax and don’t try to be an expert or think you need to be one.  Again, it’s about the company and having a learning and/or drinking experience.

2. Take notes.  Taking notes helps you remember the wines you liked and may want to purchase down the road, especially after tasting a lot of wines, the memory of that evening might get a little blurry.    Don’t worry about what your notes say, but rather use descriptions that you know and will recognize.  If it tastes like blackberries and you like that taste, write that down, but I have never tasted gooseberries or elderberries, so I would never use those terms.  Click below for some examples of tasting note cards (Powerpoint .PPT format):            

Bordeaux

Basic

S Hemi

3. Snacks are a good idea both for counteracting alcohol consumption (we talk about spit and dump buckets below) and palate cleansing between wines.  Some foods can mess with the palate such as spicy sausage or certain cheeses, so stick with plain crackers or bread (i.e. French, but NOT sourdough) if you are just doing a blind tasting and not trying to do pairings with food. Often, we will start our parties at 8pm+ so that participants have a chance to eat dinner or something prior to attending the tasting.

4. Don’t have guests bring wine in their own bags.  The host should bag the wines in identical wrapping (i.e. brown bag) and mark them with letters or numbers so that no one will be able to tell which wine they brought.  Sometimes, it helps to remove the foil on the neck, too.

5. Use a light tablecloth, white paper napkins, or white tasting note cards as this will allow for good background material to note the color of each wine.  Note: this doesn’t matter if you are doing more advanced pure blind tasting using black glasses and you don’t want to be influenced by the hue.

6. If you have guests new to the wine tasting experience, remind them to keep each taste to about 1 – 2 oz. and maybe you can show them about how much that is — we’ve had a few folks get kinda sloshed before reaching the last wine in the tasting and there’s certainly not anything wrong with that at our parties for sure — it makes for great stories.  You can remind everyone that after the tasting, they can pour full glasses of their favorites… in most cases, there is plenty of wine left to do this.

7. We prefer to go around the table or room to share some quick thoughts on each wine before moving onto the next one — sometimes we try to guess the wine and I even get lucky once in awhile.  There is no pressure for anyone to share their thoughts or notes if they don’t want to.  If your party is too large and folks are scattered around or you have multiple “stations” around your living, dining and family rooms, this isn’t possible and can wait until the end of the tasting to share notes.

8. Be sure to have some spit and dump buckets around so that guests can dump their wine if they don’t fancy it, or if they would like to reduce the chance of becoming intoxicated.  Professional tasters never consume and always spit as they taste many wines at one sitting and the effects of consumption can affect your ability to evaluate the wine as the night goes on.  We are a consumption tasting club in which almost everyone is drinking along the way and always continue the party into the late hours.  It’s your choice.  No need to get fancy as we use flower vases, pitchers or pots for this purpose.

9. To score or not to score — if you want to add a little competition to your party, have everyone score each wine from, say 1-5, and give the guests who brought the winning wine a small gift (i.e. corkscrew, wine glass charms, wine book, etc.)

That’s it!  Good luck and happy tasting.

We hosted a neighborhood tasting back in April had a wonderful time as usual.  Turns out the Menage a Trois, a personal favorite, was the winning “value wine” (the party theme) at $9.99.  Cedar on the nose and a tremendous mouthfeel, big tannins and some cassis.  Some noted some nutty characteristics as well.

But, that’s not what I am here to talk about today.  As the tasting winds down, often we sit and drink more and tell stories.  As such, I brought up another bottle of Menage a Trois as well as a Greppi super tuscan I’ve mentioned from other blogs from the basement.  However, one of our neighbors went back to his house and then brought back an il Cavaliere di Castagnole Monferatto which is made from the rare Ruche’ varietal.  It was awesome!  He happened upon it by chance while in Denver which is home of the only U.S. importer of this wine.  Turns out there are only about 100 acres of this grape grown in the Piedmont region.  It had an inky color, with distinctive fruit and peppery flavro rounded out with medium tannins.  A very nice, even wine through and through.

These are the types of discoveries that make it all worth while!  And these are the things we will discuss via the Pelly Wine Club page going forward.  We look forward to your comments.

If you’re like me, my wife and our friends, there is a high probability you are reading this with a glass of wine in your hand.  You will rarely find us without one in the evening hours after work or on the weekends.

If so, then we think you’ll enjoy participating in this online community where our goal is to educate each other in the basic characteristics and styles of wine as well as the social aspect (i.e. tastings, dinners, visiting wineries, wine clubs, etc.) of wine by sharing stories and knowledge as average, everyday wine drinkers like you.

We will also tend to be biased toward what we call “value” wines, which we define as those wines that are relatively inexpensive ($<=20), easy to obtain and taste well beyond their price point.  All of this being shared from our, and your, own non-expert experiences, as we are not wine store owners, sommeliers, nor winemakers – at least not yet! But, of course, should any experts show up, we would love to hear from them too as we all would like to educate and be educated in the ever growing and increasingly accessible world of wine.  Cheers!