Let's Drink Wine

One of the bleaders asked a very pertinent question........"When do we actually get a bottle of wine at the table?" Well, as the once great Orson Wells said in that long ago commercial for Paul Masson wine....."We will sell no wine before it's time.".....damn it.

So when we will be able to first taste this Malbec beauty? Well, there's a lot of assuming going on here in what I'm going to say next so when you read each sentence down below, always put before it....."Assuming all goes well.....", ok?

Next year, we will see all the grapes' leaves shoot up from the first wire and we'll be training the vines up to the second wire. (More training, when does it end? Never by the way.) The grapes will be succulent and plentiful on the more mature vine leisurely hanging from the first wire. The nets will be up in time just as the variason of the grapes is starting to occur. There will be no early frost. Then in mid to late September of 2010, we'll have our first harvest of grapes.

Just in time, the buyers of our grapes from all over Colorado will deliver their 1 ton white, plastic grape containers to our vineyard. And right after the correct pH and brix is determined from our testing, they'll come to double check and the harvest will begin.

That harvest time will be one day of non-stop cutting of the clusters of grapes. The fruit dropping into our personal buckets hanging from our necks. After the bucket is full, we will walk to the big white bin, open the bottom of the bucket and gently dump the purple fruits into the bins. Repeat, as quickly as possible, all day.

The wineries will come right away with their semi-trucks and quickly load them on the trucks, taking them to their winery. Then the winery will do it's thing.......press, filter, filter some more, ferment, barrel and bottle. We will not have any direct input into their wine making art during this time.

So by the year 2011, we may have a bottle of wine to show for all this work. Hopefully, it's not really just one bottle, but there is a lot of assuming going on there in all those actions.

In the mean time, I continue to "practice" my wine tasting skills. Since we have none of our own wine to speak of, I thought I'd share what I thought of the bottles I drank this weekend.

We met with dear friends, Bob and Cindy, this weekend and one thing is for sure when we visit, we always drink some great wine. This time we brought the reserve 2005 Malbec we acquired when visiting the Familia de Tomaso winery in Mendoza, Argentina last January. It is quite special. The 146th bottle out of 310. This is the kind of wine that reflects the quote from the wine movie, Sideways, when Mia said, "Waiting for a special occasion? The day you open a '61 Chenin Blanc, that's the special occasion." And a special occasion it became, because it was good. The color was deep red and rolled around in the glass with ease. Bob summed up the wine's flavor perfectly....."this wine is complete." An unusual start with almost no nose to speak of, but the wine danced on your tongue with complex tannins, lots of smoke, smooth hints of berries and a bit of spice, and it left as quietly as it started. You can check out the winery and its wines at http://www.mendozaheights.com.ar/.

The next bottle we imbibed at our impromptu campsite on the Eagle river was an $8 bottle of 2007 Casillero del Diablo Carmenere from Chile. Chile does not claim to have a signature grape like Argentina's Malbec, but if it decided to market itself with one signature grape, the Carmenere would be the clear winner. This wine was definitely the wine to drink with the brook trout Kenny caught just hours before. The wine had a berry nose, and the tongue tasted of minor tannins with a hint of plum, finishing in berries. The finish stays with you as long as like which is a good thing. A keeper for sure.

I have a philosophy about what wine I choose to buy. I believe any wine maker can make a decent $50 bottle of wine, but it takes a real master to make a drinkable wine for less than $10. So my quest is to find the best wine for as cheap as possible. There was a $5.99 bottle of Romanian wine back in 2003 that I will never forget.

Imbibe and enjoy.