If you happen to dwell in the land of hard copy, check out the current issue of Salt Lake Magazine.  Whilst neglecting Basic Juice in cyberspace, I have been nurturing it in the world of print.  Alas, I am still struggling to multitask.

For those who eschew paper, have a look at the extended, 'Author's Cut' of the article below the fold.

This I Sip

Chances are you?ve read many a wine article wherein the author recommends a particular bottle or two.  What exactly does one do with such recommendations?  Do you accept them on blind faith, dutifully seek out said bottles and schlep them home?  Of course you do!  We all do.  Everyone trusts and accepts expert opinions on all manner of topics ? movies, restaurants, music and, of course, wine.  However, there comes a time when one realizes that expert opinions on matters of taste, are essentially just that ? opinions.  For example, recall the last time you sat through a painfully bad, critic-recommended film and thought, ?I?ll never follow that guy?s advice again.?  Experts and critics may know more about their specialty than you, but your tastes may be dramatically different.  Taste, particularly when it comes to wine, is exceedingly personal.  An expert may guide you in a general direction, but the final arbiter of taste, is you and your palate.  The take home message is this:  It pays to know a wine critic?s palate before plunking down 10/20/30 bucks for a bottle you may very well despise. 

Over the coming months, I will recommend hundreds of wines in this space.  Some you will adore, others may be consigned to the dubious category of ?cooking wine.?  However, I will always do my best to explain what I like about a particular wine.  I will open my mouth - as it were - and attempt to expose every nook and cranny of my wine palate.  I don?t expect readers to employ oeno-faith and blindly follow my recommendations.  Rather, at some point, I hope our tastes connect and a wine idea put forth in this column, yields exciting discovery and fond memories.  So, in lieu of a personal introduction, allow me to introduce my wine palate, in two parts.  This, I sip ? the whites.

It?s An Acquired Taste ? Everyone has that one beloved specialty food that makes others cringe (Think: Kipper snacks, Brussels sprouts or Vienna sausages).  ?It?s an acquired taste.? You say.  I love dry Sherry.  It?s wonderfully weird wine ? slightly nutty, aggressively tangy, delightfully funky and very much an acquired taste.  My favorite Sherry combo is utterly simple: An Amontillado Sherry (Lustau Los Arcos Amontillado, $18) with oven-roasted almonds is a fiesta of out-of-the-ordinary flavors.  If you?re the type who relishes the challenge of acquiring tastes, give Sherry a try.

Cheap and Cheerful - Let?s face it; acquiring taste is demanding work.  Occasionally, I long for something uncomplicated.  Wine doesn?t need to be complicated.  There are plenty of good, simple wines.  When I would rather sip than ponder, I go for budget-priced Austrian Grüner Veltliner (Berger Grüner Veltliner 2005, $12).  This wine is simple, refreshing and exceedingly flexible with food.  Budget Grüner compliments almost any entrée exiting the oven or flying off the stovetop.  Cheap and cheerful wines like this don?t catalyze any epiphanies.  Rather, they cause one simply to remark, ?That?s good.?

I?m Feeling Naughty ? Admit it.  Every so often you yearn to do something off-the-wall - something naughty.  Of course, following through on such impulses can lead to a heap of trouble.  When I yearn for naughtiness, I grab a bottle of decadent Alsatian Gewurztraminer (Domaine Weinbach Cuvee Laurence, $40).  Gewurz-based wine has a tendency to grab one?s schnozz and hypnotize with scents of lychee, apricot, mango and honeysuckle.  The talented vintners in Alsace often introduce a layer of naughty to this decadent wine by incorporating a small portion of overripe grapes into the cuvée.  The result is wine with an added scent dimension best described as earthy (or dirty).  The indulgence doesn?t end here.  These wines possess a very thick & cheek-coating mouthfeel.  Indeed, drinking such wine feels a little bit naughty.  Try Gewurztraminer with salmon sashimi and commit an indulgent act of gastronomy.

Other White Palate Pleasers

Acquiring That Taste: Aveleda Vinho Verde NV, $8; Lopez de Heredia Vina Gravonia Crianza 1995, $25; Feudo Arancio Grillo Sicilia 2005, $9

Cheap and Cheerful: Saint M Riesling 2005, $10; Segura de Viudas Brut Cava, $9; Santa Julia Torrontes 2006, $7

Naughty, Naughty: Kalin Cellars Chardonnay Cuvee LD 1995, $33; Twisted Oak Viognier, $26; Pine Ridge Chenin Viognier 2006, $12

Coming in Part II, I introduce a few of my preferred, palate-pleasing red wines.

The Reds coming in Part 2
Business in the Front, Party in the Back

I Lost 2 Pounds!  Let?s Gain it Back

My Imaginary Smoking Jacket


Comments/Questions: Email Beau at beau@basicjuice.com
Find more wine ideas at basicjuice.blogs.com

Published on May 1st and just delivered to my doorstep via Amazon.com, The Wine Trials by Robin Goldstein enlivened (inflamed?) the wine blogosphere before anybody cracked the cover.

The striker to the matchbook?  Eric Asimov, a seasoned journalist for the New York Times, wrote a post based on reading a Newsweek article about the book.

You would not expect a journalist to comment on another piece of print media, especially without having read the book, but I guess this is the blogosphere and we are all guilty of seeking inspiration outside of traditional journalistic boundaries, but what ensued in the comments section of the post when nobody had read the book was truly sociologically interesting.

After a 65 comment explosion, Asimov wrote a follow-up after receiving a pre-release galley copy of the book and that post incited 31 comments.

Sequentially, the original post can be found here and the follow-up here.

Interestingly, the book is only, initially, available on Amazon.com.  And, yes, you guessed it.  Amazon is currently backordered on the book.

Somebody is interested …

Piqued by all of this, I did what anybody would do with all of that content on Asimov’s blog—I cut and paste into a Word document with .5 margins and 10 pt Trebuchet font.

36 pages and 17,000 words later I am more confused than before I started.  And, with no small amount of irony, the 17,000 words has to exceed the actual content in the book, which is 2/3’s wine listings. 

Here is the net-net version with this book:  the author did a blind tasting of many wines with large number of tasters (some 500 +) and the result was that numerous inexpensive wines (under $15) bested wines that are more expensive ($50 +) based on the panel of judges.

Pragmatically speaking, you do not have a book if people preferred more expensive wines to the less expensive wines so there is some room for question because the study, presumably, was set-up with an end conclusion in mind and not a hypothesis, but just the same it’s a fascinating book that makes for good arm chair reading over the course of a couple of hours.  With 58 introductory pages and the balance of the book being wine listings of the 100 wines under $15 that bested the $50 - $150 wines, it’s a light read.

The majority of the blog comments about Asimov’ posts on the book were centered on the division of small expensive wines and large grocery store wines.  This is an old ideological argument and more analogies were employed to explain the difference in art versus culture.  Variants cropped up about wine appreciation versus simpleton quaffers, etc.

Ugh, wake me when this tired old song is over with.  We get it.  Get over it.  Yes, there is a cultural difference between NASCAR fans and those that attend the symphony.  By God, both of these groups of people enjoy wine, too.

Nested within all of this debate is the essential truth by Asimov.

He states:

I am not saying wine is the equivalent of art. I do say that wine can be appreciated on many different levels, but that nobody should ever feel obliged to appreciate wine on any level. In the end, the book seems to divide wine consumers into the casual buyers who are pushed this way and that by forces they don’t understand, and the wealthy conspicuous status seekers who also are not quite aware of capitalism and marketing. Unacknowledged are the serious wine lovers who are knowledgeable, experimental and passionate, and who, yes, are in control of their own destinies. The book may speak to the first two groups, but not to the third.

As a member of the third group, the “serious wine lover” I can say unequivocally that I occasionally drink inexpensive wine and, natch, this book is an interesting take and a welcome addition to the pantheon of wine studies and a nice guidebook to the maze of choices at your grocery store for a through the week glass.

For additional reading at the source research study that led to the book, see this white paper.

Visit BusinessWeek.com for an interesting article on wine web sites, including Bottletalk.  There is also a slideshow walking you through seven different wine web sites, explaining how they work and who is behind them.

If you?re interested in designing your own custom wine cellar there are a number of options available to you. The best news is that there are wine cellar designs for everyone from the avid do-it-yourselfer to the complete woodworking novice.

There are modular wine racks that are available in different grains and finishes, with the least expensive generally being a wood such as pine. Most modular wine rack dealers will offer other materials such as red cedar or finished wood as well. Of course you can always save some money and finish the wood yourself if you desire a particular type of finish or color for your wine cellar racks.

There are many wine racking companies that offer crown molding and skirting pieces so that you can easily combine different styles of wine cellar racking materials and types. This approach can yield some very unique custom wine cellar designs.

There are built in glass racks that are made to fit snugly within a rack system. A good place for one of these individual units would be above the table top piece mentioned above. This would add to the ambience as well as functionality of your custom modular wine racking system.

If you want something a little different than the traditional wood wine cellar racks, there are attractive metal trellis rack pieces that are very economical, yet stylish. These tend to look classier than the wood modular wine racking pieces, especially for placement in bar areas that will be viewed by visitors.

If you would like to add a table area to your wine cellar while increasing the storage capacity of your cellar at the same time, a wine bin table may be the best addition to your modular racking system. There are taller, wine tasting tables that hold just over 100 bottles or about 180 bottles of wine, and there are shorter wine rack tables that hold more than 200 wine bottles in case bins.

There are many online dealers and manufacturers of wine cellar racking pieces that also offer custom computer design services to help you achieve the exact wine cellar layout that you have in mine. With many of these professional services you can then have the plans sent to you and decide if you will build them yourself or have someone else build them for you.

With all of the wine cellar design options available to you, there are many ways to accomplish the perfect wine cellar design for you and your situation. There are many wine enthusiasts online communities and the like where you can find others interested in the same things that you are and maybe gain some other ideas about wine cellars and the design aspect of creating your own wine cellar.

There are lots of things going on in my life these days. Very busy times. But for now, its a good busy…

My second daughter is due any week now (officially March 4th, but the last Dr visit said the baby was already 6 lbs and Kelly is petite so she won’t be in there too much longer…).

In my life I find I draw inspiration from many places. Usually my family and friends. A few weeks ago the wine community inspired me. I’m hatching an idea. I’ve spoken to a few of you about it and I’ll more than likely speak to a few more. But for now, I’ll use the pages of WLT to chronicle what I’m doing with my idea and its evolution.

Its amazing the what the meshing of a passion with a profession can accomplish. Its a powerful thing when that gets match with inspiration.

I have an idea…

Perhaps it is serendipitous that my Amazon.com purchase of Alice Feiring’s new treatise, The Battle for Wine and Love, came at approximately the same time that I pulled the cork on a winery sample from Cooper Mountain Vineyards.

Feiring’s book is a broadside against technology in winemaking and the Cooper Mountain “Mt. Terroir” is as about as natural of a wine as they come.

(Cooper Mountain) Mountain Terroir (Five Elements Pinot Noir) is a blend of some of the best grapes harvested from our three vineyards sites (Grabhorn & Meadowlark & Johnson School). Singled out in individual barrels for aging, the contents of this bottle have been carefully brought together to convey what we hope to be the best expression of Cooper Mountain’s terroir, of our environment.

And, frankly, you have to love a winery that produces only 90 cases of a biodynamic Pinot Noir Cuvee from estate-grown grapes and they decide to sample some to the blogosphere.  It is a bold choice and demonstrates an incredible insight into old-world winemaking technique and the new market dynamics of the modern day. And, it helps that it is a fantastic wine. 

I feel like I was a part of an experiment.  Ostensibly, this sampling was a litmus test by Cooper Mountain.  The wine is certified organic and biodynamic, fermented with native yeasts.  They wanted to know whom the rube is, who does not “get it.”

It is not hard to “get” this wine.  And, in parallel to Feiring’s book, it is not hard to see the immediate point of natural winemaking.

Of all the biodynamic wines that I have tasted, each of them has expressed a certain “it” factor.

Now, mind you, just like NFL quarterbacks, it is very difficult to describe what “it” is.  Sometimes you just know it when you see “it.” The liveliness, the je ne sais quoi … the LeBron James or the Peyton Manning factor at work, as opposed to the merely good, at the highest level.

Biodynamics wine is a controversial subject, some view it as poppycock, a skepticism about some of the mysticism. 

Here’s where I come down on BioD wines – there’s room enough in the world all variants of winemaking, but it’s hard to argue with what frequently gets delivered in the bottle.  BioD wine is hard to describe, but you know “it” when you taste “it.”

That is a point that Alice Feiring argues and Cooper Mountain delivers.

My review is found here.

Today, I have a treat for myself. I need a treat. It’s been one of those weeks that leaves you wondering why you even bother going to bed, since you’ll be up at back at work the minute you wake up again. Recently, my days have started to feel drawn out and full of ups and downs, and to be honest, I really didn’t want to participate in this month’s Wine Blog Wednesday even though the theme, Old World Reisling, is something I truly adore. I just don’t have the energy, but then I decided to change my attitude to become a little more relaxed and calm.

The reason I love Old World Reisling is for one simple reason, or rather one particular man, Terry Theise. If you’re not familiar with his name, please stop reading and go to his page at Skurnik Wines. Download all of his wine catalogs and start reading veraciously. I can wait. In fact, if you don’t make it back here, I excuse you, because these catalogs are too good to be true.

To be honest, I’m not much of a writer, nor am I much of a reader. And because I love them both, we call this a conundrum. I write here, and I read there, and I sometimes find myself feeling a little empty. Maybe it’s the content, the subjects or both. I’m not really sure, but when I went looking for information on one of my Reislings today, I found Terry.

Mind you, if it weren’t for this man, I wouldn’t be appreciating these bottles of wine right now. It would be equivalent to using the 100 point system and not knowing who Robert Parker is. So, I quickly downloaded his catalog where I thought I might find reference to my German Reisling, but suddenly, I was lost. Lost in his words, wit and wisdom. Terry’s catalogs, whether you like wine or not, are a must read for his frankness, honesty, word play, and humor. If you don’t love German Reisling, well, you may change your mind when you read Terry’s words.

To start his report, he always places his manifesto at the top, before you get to the meat of the report.
Theise Mannifesto

• Beauty is more important than impact.
• Harmony is more important than intensity.
• The whole of any wine must always be more than the sum of
  its parts.
• Distinctiveness is more important than conventional
  prettiness.
• Soul is more important than any thing, and soul is expressed as
  a trinity of family, soil and artisanality.

This is a manifesto that I can get behind! Drinking Iberian wine everyday, I often forget how much I love the world of wine and not anyone region. These words are timeless, and in my opinion, great advice for anyone just getting into wine. Live by these words and you can’t go wrong.

But this post is not about Terry Theise, but rather Old World Reisling. Today, we have 2 wines in front of us, one from the heralded 2003 vintage in Germany, an Auslese from one of the premier wine makers in Terry’s collection. I bought this wine as a future at a tasting in Minneapolis back when I still sold wine. A guided tasting with one of the sharpest palates I’ve ever been with, Terry showed us that despite “Crazy-ass heat” one could still make a Reisling full of nuance and character. In truth, I can’t tell you why I bought this one versus the many others that were in my price range at the time. I was relatively new to German wines, and excited to explore a region that seems totally frightening when you look at the complicated labels. But on this particular night, I learned that I had to at least try and dig through the odd characters, strange accents, and unpronounceable