Would anyone like to venture a guess to what this title refers? Try 600 wines, 6 people, and 2 hours.
I was fortunate enough to attend the “Philadelphia Wine Festival”, sponsored by Philadelphia Magazine and the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) on (date) along with WineLog’s illustrious owners, Bill, Kim and Jason, my wife Kim and Bill’s better half Vena.
This was an opportunity to try wines from all over the world, in addition to wines I had heard about and never tried. It was also an excellent chance to explore and expand my wine horizons with different varietals, regions, and producers. There was also opportunity to speak with some of the winemakers, Brand managers, and distributors’ representatives. With row upon row of tables the first task at hand was to plot out an approximate tasting order. I chose to begin with white, then red and finally the dessert wines. From a formal wine tasting perspective this is typical, but the downside is having to revisit tables for their other selections. A lot of extra work but, hey I like to make things complicated.
Okay, enough with the jabbering, my tasting notes are informal, here are the highlights:
Last Thursday’s Lionheart tasting at Artisan was a roaring success, with both tasters and winemakers very satisfied with the evening. Wine was discovered, bottles bought and taste buds were pleased.
As I announced previously, Lionheart’s winemaker Leon Glover brought out 5 wines for us to try, all pre-release until his Mane Event Summer Release party later that Saturday at Crushpad. I got there a little before the start of the event and said hello to Leon and Artisan proprietor Lena and caught up with them for a bit before tasting some of the wines there that night. I hadn’t tasted most of the wines since the barrel tasting, and I was excited to try them now from the bottle. I was so busy getting caught up that I forgot to try any of the wines before we got busy! Once that mistake was rectified, I was free to mingle and check out our crowd, with had great diversity in age, style and wine knowledge. Also making the event were Marshall & Brittany, founders of WineQ.com. After raving about Lionheart for so long, I was glad that they could finally check out the wines for themselves.
WineLog.net is very excited to announce an evening discovering the wines of Lionheart Wines at Artisan Wine Lounge & Cafe in Walnut Creek, CA. Winemaker Leon Glover will be pouring his Summer release wines that will be officially released later this month.
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WineLog.net & Artisan Wine Lounge & Cafe Present:
An Evening with Winemaker Leon Glover & Lionheart Wines
07/17/08 7pm - 9pm
$10 per person for wine and appetizers
15% Off all Lionheart Wines purchased at the tasting!
Most of my readers know that I have a fond place in my heart for the wines from Carmel Valley, CA. Beth and I have made numerous trips to the Carmel-by-the-Sea and Carmel Valley region over the years, as evidenced by the travel post I wrote earlier this year. We’ve tasted some great wines over the years from wineries such as Heller Estate, Bernardus, Galante Vineyards and Boete. I only get truly excited, however, by the wines from Georis Winery and Parsonage Village Vineyard (PVV). Last weekend, Frank Melicia, Bill Parsons and the entire rest of the combined clan threw their very first party, their 1st Annual Wine Club Party, to be exact…and I was fired up!
The Walnut Creek Downtown Business Association launched a new yearly event this past Wednesday (06/25/08) with their first annual Downtown Wine Walk. For a $20 fee, you (were supposed to) receive a commemorative wine glass and a map to that showed the various downtown stores, restaurants and bars that were participating and pouring wine from 6-9pm that evening. This first event focused on Napa wines. The event fit in well with their long-running annual Art & Wine Festival and various downtown art and farmer’s market events. It also was well-timed to take advantage of the wine renaissance that is continuing to take place downtown where many wine bars and stores have gone in over the last year or so (and is also taking place across the Bay Area).
I met up with my friends Kristin & Ian and we had high hopes for the evening until we realized that we should have bought Presales…
Every time I go to a wine event that includes multiple wineries, I will usually find one winery that is new to me and stands out from the rest. I stumbled across many great wineries at the Wine 2.0 Spring Fling at Crushpad last April. But two wines from a particular new winery have stuck with me over the last two months. Leon C. Glover III’s Lionheart Wines had two very good Syrahs that night…and the scary thing is that they were from his very first and second vintages!
2005 found Leon in an interesting spot in his life. As a former and very successful Programmer/Project Manager, Associate Venture Partner focused on technical due diligence, self-taught chef and a recent recipient of an MBA, he was looking at his options in a tech industry environment that was beginning to look like the late 90’s again with the Web 2.0 movement in full hype. Then, a funny thing happened. His wife, Jen stepped in and offered him a rather nice gift…of the kind that keep giving.
More major wineries have been sold in the US. This time, unlike some of the more recent major deals in the wine biz, two conglomerates are shuffling their portfolios. Constellation brands, one of the top two largest international wine conglomerates, has announced (AP commentary) that they are selling eight wineries to a new player in the field, the reformed Ascentia Wine Estates (Eight Estates Fine Wines) of Healdsburg, CA.
Gary Farrell, Geyser Peak, XYZin, Buena Vista Carneros, and Atlas Peak will be sold from Constellation’s California stable. They will also transfer Pacific Northwest properties Columbia Winery, Covey Run, and Sunnyside Winery to Ascentia. Ste. Chapelle from Idaho will also see its ownership change. The deal has been valued at up to US$234 million, and will also include 600+ acres of vineyard properties around Napa and Sonoma.
It will be interesting if the sales will actually affect any of these wineries, unlike some of the private wineries that have been sold recently to major conglomerates.
One of the things that I’ve really tried to step up in my personal wine education is my ability to guess a blinded wine’s provenance or origin. What is the grape, what is the region and if I’m super-lucky, what is the actual wine?
In this case, led by Lisa and Joe, the gOenophiles’ intrepid vinous adventurers decided to try and tackle one of the most difficult cases of guessing a blinded wine’s varietal…New World Syrah/Shiraz vs. Zinfandel.
Here’s a question that recently hit our inbox. I thought others out there might be interested in how to log wines through the WineLog Mobile site and might not even know about the cool send yourself a message feature.
The email:
I really like your mobile site, and it looks great on my iPhone. But it would be REALLY great if I could add new wines to my log through that site. As I’m out and about, and reading about new wines or at the store or at a friend’s house, it would be so helpful to be able to add them to my log immediately. Do you have plans to add that to the mobile site?
My response after the break…
Californian and American wine has lost one of its greatest leaders.
Robert G. Mondavi, wine industry scion and founder of the the famous eponymous Napa winery passed away at the age of 94 on Friday, 05/16/08.
Arresting and vibrantly engaging even towards the end, Mondavi is widely regarded as the greatest influence on American wine over the last four decades and an unstoppable force that led to the international renown that Californian wine in particular, now enjoys across the globe.
He was a leader that introduced and blended New and Old World fine winemaking techniques… (more after the break)
