SECRETS OF THE WINE GUESSING GAME
For those of you who have never played the game of guessing what the wine in a concealed bottle is, I wanted to share some of our tips on how to impress others with seemingly magical identification powers only master sommeliers posses. The trick is to not use just the nose and palate, but rather anything and everything that all five senses might reveal about the mystery wine. In this regard your eyes and fingers are almost as important as your nose and tongue.The most basic differentiation is between what we call sloped bottles versus shouldered bottles, as noted in[...]
A RESPECTABLE ROSE
Rose wines are the Rodney Dangerfield of the wine world. Does anyone give them respect? When I first joined my wine tasting group in the mid 90's, there were some that seemed to, because we actually had aged rose's show up in our Friday night tastings. But then they were brought by he same people who were aging Beaujolais Noveau who, fortunately have since ceased and desisted. We hardly ever get a rose in our main wine group. For those familiar with it, rose wine is a great summer sipping drink. Uncork and guzzle. Light in alcohol, unchallenging in flavor[...]
THE NEIGHBOR
In the pubertal environment of the all boys English High School of Istanbul, hormones raged. I suppose they do in every assortment of such boys. We didn’t quite know where to direct our rather hazy emerging sexuality. We fantasized about the few female teachers that were around, especially a cute little art teacher with whom any of us would have been happy to have a virgin experience. We talked incessantly about what little we knew at time about sex. We speculated.There was one other act we engaged in, which, in retrospect would have been unusual for pubescent boys. Explaining this[...]
SCIENCE AND A ROYAL VISIT
In one of the more surreal events of my years in the English High School of Istanbul, I came face-to-face with Princess Anne, the daughter of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. The year was 1971, and it happened, of all places, in a chemistry lab at the school, located on the very top floor.For most of the 20th century the English High School stood as a bright beacon of British colonialism in the exotic lands of the Muslim Turks. The Brits, of course never actually colonialised the heart of the Ottoman Empire, as they did India or Egypt, or[...]
ANOTHER INSANITY IN THE WINE WORLD
The bottle of wine you see in the picture was on sale for $20 at K&L Wines in San Francisco last weekend. So what?This is a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape from a good vintage, 2006, and its former price was around $40. Chateauneuf du Pape is the crowning prince of the Southern Rhone and commands high prices. I don't think I have ever bought a bottle from this appellation at that price in the last few years. Needless to say I asked a clerk at the store what the was going on. His reponse gave me an epiphany about[...]
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
Our most recent Friday night wine tasting took place at our friend Padmesh's house. Pad, as we call him, has come to build an extensive Bordeaux collection which he has been sharing with us in the past few years. We have come to know especially the 1990 vintage through bottles he has opened repeatedly. Thus, on this occasion when he brought two decanters filled with red wine we pretty much figured they were going to be good Bordeaux's. We usually do not engage in decanter ceremonies unless we lose a cork in an old bottle we had trouble opening, and[...]