wooohoooo.. 1st one.. nice job Gary

Dang….Howabout a caoster for number 2!!

Gary. I remember when you did not need the prerequisite ‘red’ in frot of Zinfandel.

Good to see you giving the old Z its moment. Great to see some wines in the sub $20 get play and kudos. I will try the Graziano and Passagno on your recco.

I find I enjoy sipping while watching. Even though you may have Cabernet in your glass, and I may have Syrah in mine.

I find that the Syrah of today is the Zinfandel of yesterday (pre 1990) in that most of todays Zins are way over the top. The Syrahs have tho qualities that Zin should have, slight pepper, great balance, and more of a refrained alcohol level. Thats not to say I don’t like Zin today, I just need to search harder. I went to Zin in the City a few years ago and came out with 3 that I enjoyed! (tasted over 200).

Keep up the good work.
Mike

So if the “Veyner-nod” means that a wine is good – do we say that the bad wines have been “Veyner-chucked”

thanks Gary…I’ll be looking out in the mail for that tshirt….

My worst story has something to do with that Beringer Zin… I am really ashamed of it.. but, ok, here goes… I once paid $28 for that bottle.. Wifey and I were on a cruise ship and I all of the sudden wanted some of this “stuff”… $28 + mandatory 15% tip.. I still remember this moment and laugh at myself..

Gary, your a hoot..always a joy to watch and learn from. I sit here nodding in agreement.. well, most of the time. Particularly your Ber. white zin comment…why bother, indeed. Keep up the great work

Gary, your a hoot..always a joy to watch and learn from. I sit here nodding in agreement.. well, most of the time. Particularly your Ber. white zin comment…why bother, indeed. Keep up the great work

TIM we have an amazing temp controlled situation. As for the shipping of the wines we are holding onto a lot of the shipments and over night orders we are sending out.

Worst wine experience, aside from my own first wine making attempt, is probably the 2003 Casa Lapastolle Cuvee Alexandre Cab. Was a big fan of the stuff for previous few vintages, but the 03 had so much new oak it tasted like a 2×4. $20 down the drain. The Norman “Monster” Zin was pretty aweful stuff too. The only 2 wines I can remember that I drank 1 glass of and dumped.

Worst wine experience: My folks went to Spain roughly ten years ago and brought back 2 bottles of Vega Sicilia from the Ribera del Duero. They waited several years to open them and finally did so on Christmas. Both had gone horribly bad most likely because they were not stored properly…my mom had admitted to exposing them to heat and sunlight in her kitchen for several years. I can’t fault her, she had no idea what she’d done…can’t say anything more than it was just very unfortunate…

Gary — great stuff! One nagging question: what’s up with the “art” (to use a term loosely) behind you? I keep trying and failing to discover a link between the picture on the wall and the day’s episode. What am I missing?

Worst wine experience? Think Bartles & Jaymes and high school and you’ll get some idea.

Hey Gary what about Ridge? Great Zins there; you mentioned Turley too …

Worst wine story? Paying too much for wine in France and then waiting as it cleared customs for a WEEK during late summer. Spent a lot of time biting my nails and looking at weather reports and decided not to do THAT again …

Do I get a free t-shirt and a 25% royalty skim for the VaynerNod or what??? In response to today’s question…. I think I win.

I was in Chile, on a study abroad program about 5 years ago, and had lunch at the Chilean Senate cafeteria. Because I can speak Spanish I was delegated to sit between two Chilean Senators. Towards the end of lunch I took a small zip of the cab and snarfed a fine mist all over the table and the fine folks surrounding me- honest to God. Now, I have to say, it wasn’t a snarf at the poor quality of the wine (which was horrible) but instead it was a snarf that happens to me randomely once every few years, without explanation. The short of it is that after a lot of excusing myself and wiping of wine from the table I was able to win over the Senators and continue the lunch as if nothing had ever happened. Good times, good times, …

Hey Gary!

Go back to saying “sucks” when it does.

Slate says it is OK:

http://www.slate.com/id/2146866/

Tell it like it is! You rock!

(Worst wine story? An expensive white purchased from an arrogant wine store owner here in Houston who tells me he has an “extremely educated palate” The wine was like the middle ages: Nasty, brutish, and (lucky for me) short)

Worst wine story: I moved my wine cellar from coastal Santa Cruz, CA to Piercy, CA in southern Humboldt county. Soon thereafter the temperatures hit over 100 degrees for 15 straight days. Can you say “cooking sherry”! Yuck. I had to start collecting over again. Jim

Another great episode. I love California Zin. I would have been curious to see how the big time Zin producers (Rosenblum, Ravenswood) would have fared in that contest. Also, is there much of a difference between the Seghesio Old Vine Zin vs. their regular offering? I have never tried the old vine zin but the regular zin has never let me down……

Worst wine experience has to be when I went out to dinner at a very nice restaurant with a bunch of people from work and someone in our party chose a Brunello for the table and then gave me the tasting duties when the bottle arrived. Surely enough, I really thought the wine was terrible and told her so but she tried it and said that it was fine and that “You must not be used to Italian wines”. Meanwhile I am hugely into Italian wines and after it was poured for the table, everyone proceeded to think the wine was terrible. Why that story was a bad experience for me is that I felt like my opinion wasn’t taken seriously because I am a younger guy but meanwhile, I probably drink and taste more wines than most people at the table……….

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It’s OK to be a wine geek…that’s a far cry from wine snob. I was up in Tahoe and my whole family was there (2004). One family member brings up two bottles of 75 – 78 Chateau Palmer, somewhere in there. We’re BBQing chicken and this family member goes to open a bottle for dinner as he knows I’m a huge wine fan. His wife steps in and says, “We’re not opening that with Chicken, are you crazy?” I was leaving in the morning so I was completely bummed. I vowed from that point on to serve and enjoy the wine I take to places as if I was sharing them with Bacchus himself!!!
Don’t be a snob, be a geek!

vayner rating logos!

http://www.gngnet.com/images/MySpace/vaynernod.gif

http://www.gngnet.com/images/MySpace/vaynerchucked.gif

Worst wine experience — easy winner. My wife and I were in Napa last year. We had made an appointment at Hartwell Vineyards for a tasting. We were ten minutes late and they would not let us in the gate onto the property. At first blush, this almost seems reasonable, but having tasted at Hartwell before we knew there was an at least 15 minute history of the winery and mini tour before sitting down to taste. On an even more puzzling level, they knew we spent well over a thousand dollars the last time we visited. These people took themselve way too serious and made a poor business decision. The silver lining — Cliff Lede Vineyards (about 1/4 mile away on the Silverado trail) was an awsome substitute. The wines at CLV were as good or better and half the price. I am a former Hartwell client. I will go out of my way to not buy their wine.

I disagree a little bit with gary’s view of white zin.

” why does anyone drink this stuff”.

Easy because they are not wine drinkers and dont have the developed palate to drink real wine. They drink it because they enjoy it and it makes them happy. If I was used to driving around 10 year old ford escorts all the time and did not know that better cars are easy to be had I wouuld enjoy the ford escort just fine.

To me that comment came off a little bit like some of the stuff I read on WS boards that are a little snobish. Dont get me wrong I know that I can have 1000 better wines than a berenger white zin. but if I were a huge white zin fan I would feel like I was being talked down upon by this episode.

I feel it does not bother anyone to say a wine sucks but to say “why does anyone drink this stuff” might make the people that do drink it not feel so great.

I just remember how I felt when I was new to wine trying to ask questions on WS message boards.

Love the show gary I watch them all, and I look forward to reciving my first order.

Gary,

I’ve had the 03 Seghisio Old Vine Zin. It was hyped to me as a great wine, and I couldn’t wait to pop the cork. But my response was similar to yours: not so great. Helped turn me off to zins (that and my April trip to Amador/Eldorado County “Zin Country” – where I didn’t taste a single zin that I thought was drinkable. Some of these bad boys – and a I mean bad – had 16.5% alcohol!) Yuck!!

Worst wine experience: Last Christmas my wife and I treated ourselves to a week long trip to Napa and Sonoma. I was totally amped about visiting some of the smaller wineries that made great wine. Unfortunately, a couple of things ruined that. First, it rained the whole time we were there. We left right before the Napa River flooded the town of Napa, giving up after only two days. But those two days would have been awesome if not for the other thing – I came down with a killer cold the first day there. I couldn’t smell or taste a thing – except the alcohol in the wines. We ended up only visiting two wineries before I gave up – everything I tasted tasted like crap. I was seriously bummed.

On the plus side, as my wife said, if it hadn’t been for my cold, we wouldn’t have left when we did, and we might have gotten washed away in the flood.

Man I’m way late on this one.
I have 4 friends that will get this episode emailed to them as they are huge Zin fans. I too am a Zin fan and really enjoyed this episode.
Gary…Keep changing the background pictures. It gives me and my buddy extra things to talk about ie:who the figures are and what sporting event it is depicting.
Worst wine experience…Mine would have to be similar to a few other WLTV fanatics. The ever popular “peer pressure purchase” comes to mind. I was out at a pretty nice restaurant with my girl and two other couples. The two other couples had come to the restaurant the week before and tried a wine that they raved and raved about. So when they told me what wine I was going to pick 😉 I folded under pressure. Guess what…I get to taste too. So I look, swirl, sip, swish, slurp, and swallow. I must have had the worst look on my face because the entire group of people including the waitress was stunned. I said “looks like box wine, smells like box wine, tastes like….hhmmm, box wine and if I am paying for part of a $75 bottle of wine it won’t be this one.”
My friends tasted it (from my glass) and thought is was just fine. So here I am looking like a tool because I had slready told the waitress that we would not be having that wine. She was preplexed and did not know what to do. She said “well it is already open and you had some so you have to pay for it.” Manager please…The manager was reluctant to take the wine back too as it was not corked. My solution was that my friends could drink it and pay for it but I would choose another wine for my girl and me. After a long look at the wine list she drank water and I drank good old Samuel Adams Boston Lager!
To this day my friends have always pointed out the “wine snob”
I say geek…they say snob.
I drink Elderton…they drink Rosemount.
What can I say?
So Gary…you said there was a point to the best movie of all time question…I’m waiting.