Tasting Notes

Tasting notes for individual wines.

Lodi Tempranillo for #TempranilloDay — Five Delicious Choices

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Today is International Tempranillo Day. An entire day dedicated to the enjoyment of Tempranillo wine. If you’ve never enjoyed the variety, it’s a good time to do so. If you’re already a fan of the variety, it’s the perfect time to enjoy your favorite Tempranillo or maybe find a new favorite. Here are five delicious choices from Lodi for your #TempranilloDay celebration.

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November #WineStudio – It’s All About Willamette Valley Chardonnay

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We will be spending Tuesday evenings in November getting the lowdown on Willamette Valley Chardonnay with #WineStudio, an online Twitter-based wine education program. The discussions, organized by Protocol Wine Studio, begin at 6 pm Pacific time. You can join the conversation by following the hashtag #WineStudio. We will post a summary each week to keep you up to date.

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Two Red Wines, One Pasta Dinner

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The birch tree in our backyard has turned bright yellow, and its leaves are dropping rapidly, creating a brilliant carpet. The weather is cooling and my taste is turning once again to red wine. I do love fall.

Just ahead of the change of seasons, we recently received two red wines as tasting samples from our twitter friend Mark Aselstine (@wineclubguy). Yes, as you might guess from Mark’s twitter handle he has established a wine club, along with brother-in-law Matt Krause. It’s cleverly called Uncorked Ventures. But it’s more than just a wine club.

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Madeira: My Love Affair Continues

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I fell in love with Madeira over 15 years ago. First the wine, then the island. My wine exploration began with a bottle of Rainwater Madeira recommended to me by a local wineshop owner. Rainwater is a lighter style of Madeira and he suggested it would be a good wine to introduce me to the flavors of Madeira. He was right. I fell in love with the island of Madeira when we traveled there in 2002. We recently attended a tasting of Madeira wine which brought back many memories of our trip to the island.

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Butternut Squash Risotto: White Wine or Rosé for #winePW 5?

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The theme for the October Wine Pairing Weekend (#winePW) is Fall Fruits and Wine Pairings. Fall fruits…hmm that title made me think of dessert initially. But, then I got to thinking about what a fall fruit is. I pretty quickly determined that squash is a fruit, and not a vegetable as I had assumed, so that opened-up the possibility of cooking a savory dish instead of a dessert. Since butternut squash is my favorite fall squash, I set about finding a recipe using butternut squash.

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Bechthold Vineyard: Ancient Vine Cinsault in Lodi

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The Bechthold Vineyard is 25 acres of Cinsault planted on the west side of Lodi — in the Mokelumne River sub-appellation of the Lodi AVA. This own-rooted vineyard was planted in 1886 by Joseph Spenker. Fortunately the soil on the west side of Lodi is particularly sandy (sandy loam to be exact), and too well drained to allow phylloxera a toehold. That good fortune, along with the family’s desire to preserve this part of their farming history has allowed this gem of a vineyard to remain productive at 128 years of age.

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Rinascimento Wine Company: Building Relationships, Selling Italian Wine

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We spent Tuesday evenings during September learning about Rinascimento Wine Company and its founder Justin Gallen with Protocol Wine Studio and their Twitter-based wine education program #WineStudio. Justin has combined his love of wine and Italian literature into an Italian wine import and distribution business in California. He is busy building relationships with producers and clients alike. He’s a big fan of Italian wines and provided us with four very good reasons we should be too.

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Bushman Rock Estate wines

Bushman Rock Estate — Why Yes, I Will Have Some Zimbabwean Wine With My Botswana Safari

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Travel is great fun and so is wine. Combining the two can be twice the fun. As we planned our trip to Africa, we knew we would be tasting many wines from South Africa. In fact we extended our stay to do just that. But, we also wanted to try and find wine from at least one of the other countries we would be visiting. We succeeded in tasting four interesting wines from Bushman Rock Estate in Zimbabwe while we were in Botswana. What a great wine adventure!

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Domaine de Bila-Haut: Roussillon Wines from Michel Chapoutier

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Maison M. Chapoutier is a family-owned winery (and négotiant business) located in Tain-l’Hermitage in the northern Rhone. The family’s winemaking history dates back to 1808 and is closely linked with Hermitage. Though the family’s winemaking roots are in the northern Rhone, current winemaking interests also include vineyards in Alsace, Portugal, Australia and the Languedoc-Roussillon region in southern France.

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