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mostly wine stuff

mdf

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Just got the latest "drinking with Esther" newsletter from the SF Chronicle. Always a fun read:

"By now, you may have seen the reports that wine sales have hit Christmas- and Thanksgiving-like
levels since much of the U.S. began staying home to halt the spread of the coronavirus.
The most stunning boost came during the week of March 15, according to Nielsen, when retail
saw a year-over-year increase of 66% (!) in wine sales value. ...
One of the biggest gains? Three-liter boxes of wine grew 80%. If that’s not stocking up,
I don’t know what is."

A three liter wine box!!!! I bet that's great stuff. :roflmao:
 

jmeb

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A three liter wine box!!!! I bet that's great stuff. :roflmao:

I'm lucky enough to have a couple friends who work as somms. Each of them has a box of sharp white in their fridge at all times.

Not all 3Ls are bota or black boxes. Some good producers put their juice in there. Of course the price is more in the 30-40$ range.
 

jmeb

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Not feeling great this morning...but I have a inkling my birthday last night was fun for the two of us.

Chenin got pounded a bit faster than intended with a family virtual HH.

Value pick of the night was the german gilabert -- delightful fun red fruit, really well balanced. Cava is such a stupid value -- where else do you get a traditional method sparkler, aged almost 2 years on lees, organically produced, for $12-14?

The Nero d'Avola took a couple hours to show its full glory. Really spot on with the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and hazelnut ice cream for dessert.
 
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skibob

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I'm lucky enough to have a couple friends who work as somms. Each of them has a box of sharp white in their fridge at all times.

Not all 3Ls are bota or black boxes. Some good producers put their juice in there. Of course the price is more in the 30-40$ range.
What is "sharp white"?
 

jmeb

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What is "sharp white"?

Not a technical term . I meant it as something of medium to lighter body, a good bit of acid, lower alcohol, little-to-no oak, maybe some minerality. In short -- a palate cleansing, not-to-ponderous wine that is easy to enjoy without a lot of hubbub. More Austrian gruner vetliner than Cali Chard.
 

skibob

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On the subject of box wines, there is nothing wrong with the package for wine that is going to be consumed soon. And that is the key. O2 ingress in a bag in box limits the functional shelf life to about a year. And that is a year from when it is "boxed" at the winery. So, as long as it is something with good turnover, and you take it home and open it, the package itself is fine.

In recent years there has been better wine marketed in boxes in the US. But in France in particular they have been putting quaffable wine (Rhone and Langudedoc wines in particular) in boxes for several decades now. I've seen as big as 10 liter boxes in France. Those are mostly for restaurants.
 

cantunamunch

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O2 ingress in a bag in box limits the functional shelf life to about a year.

Is it the flexibility that kills it or the valve coupling?

I know gable top container designers significantly curtailed gas permeability when they switched to PETG/metal/PET/cardboard sandwiches but those walls are fairly rigid., and the valve coupling has a metal coated seal. That was 20 years ago, no strides forward since?
 

skibob

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Is it the flexibility that kills it or the valve coupling?

I know gable top container designers significantly curtailed gas permeability when they switched to PETG/metal/PET/cardboard sandwiches but those walls are fairly rigid., and the valve coupling has a metal coated seal.
Good question. I don't really know. But O2 adsorption by wine is easy to measure. I don't know that the studies have tried to determine how it is getting in. That could potentially lead to a solution. OTOH, having NO O2 ingress is a bad thing too. Every attempt to develop an alternative closure for glass bottles tries to imitate natural cork in that regard.
 
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Tony S

Tony S

I have a confusion to make ...
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OTOH, having NO O2 ingress is a bad thing too. Every attempt to develop an alternative closure for glass bottles tries to imitate natural cork in that regard.

I totally understand the financial motivation to replace cork with ... well, not-cork.

I am less clear on the quality control / contamination issues with cork that winemakers face. Maybe a ton of bottles are jettisoned before they reach consumers due to bad corks? (Not sure how that would happen.) Or maybe it's just a pain for winemakers BEFORE the wine is bottled, as they toss a high-percentage of dodgy corks into the dust bin. But honestly I just don't run into all that many corked wines. Never have. I suppose I just don't have the smell-and-taste gene for that, the same way Wendy can't smell that mildew-y "old-damp-towel" smell that I get from six feet away, even in the tiniest dose.
 

cantunamunch

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In other news, the wine fridge at the condo gasped its Freony last back in early March and we didn't know it for a few weeks.

No great loss since it was mostly herself's cava :D though I might have regretted the Marques de Gelida Pinot Noir rose...
 

skibob

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I totally understand the financial motivation to replace cork with ... well, not-cork.

I am less clear on the quality control / contamination issues with cork that winemakers face. Maybe a ton of bottles are jettisoned before they reach consumers due to bad corks? (Not sure how that would happen.) Or maybe it's just a pain for winemakers BEFORE the wine is bottled, as they toss a high-percentage of dodgy corks into the dust bin. But honestly I just don't run into all that many corked wines. Never have. I suppose I just don't have the smell-and-taste gene for that, the same way Wendy can't smell that mildew-y "old-damp-towel" smell that I get from six feet away, even in the tiniest dose.
My experience is quite different. I used to run into them all the time. Around 2000 a very good study was done and found that around 6.5% of cork closed wine had a TCA level above threshold.

Alternative closures then exploded as a result. For a few years they were growing exponentially and many pundits were proclaiming the death of cork.

However, the cork manufacturers were paying attention. They quite quickly developed methods and procedures for for screening their corks. Now the incidence is down to less than .5%. Alternative closures continue to be a small but not insignificant part of the market.

In recent years, I've encountered exactly one corked bottle. It was made by a client of mine and I alterted him to it. That particular bottling run, it turns out, in which two different wines were bottled, had a high incidence of TCA. They think around 2%. That is considered high these days. They switched cork suppliers (although it may have been a fluke) and have had nearly no issues since.

IMHO, cork is still the best closure for a glass bottle. There are also some agglomerated products (Diam stands out) that are quite good.

EDIT: Oh, and although there have been a few high profile incidents of TCA in a winery, the industry moved away from chlorine (a necessary ingredient for "2,3,4 trichloroanisole) cleaners decades ago. You still come across barrels with TCA on occasion. But anybody who doesn't sniff a barrel before filling it ends up fertilizing the vineyard (JK, at least, I think).
 
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mdf

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I haven't had the guided tasting required to learn the difference between "corked" and "other problems" in a bottle. But there certainly were a lot more bad bottles (and its little brother, "bottle variation") when I started getting serious about wine in the late 1980's than there are now. We also saw a big difference in frequency of bad bottles by country of origin -- Italy being worst and Australia being best -- but that doesn't really hold anymore.
 

mdf

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We had an older (2012) white from the cellar that has held up surprisingly well. It's a nice lemony vermintino from Sardinia. We were quite pleased with it.

I made chicken with a lemon-ginger sauce and deconstructed ratatouille (just tomatoes and zucchini) and rice pilaf.
20200416_201129.jpg
 

jmeb

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Tonight's random pop was just perfection with an roasted tomatoes on homemade sourdough and a side of sauteed green beans and toasted almonds.

Retails for ~$15. Classic muscadet acidity, bright fruit and that little bit of sherry-esque yeast that gives it a ton of depth and versatility. Info on the vintner here: http://louisdressner.com/producers/Ollivier/

IMG_1480.JPG
 

pete

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Not bad considering age


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