I think we should compile a “best of Gary” or “Gary bloopers” episode just in time for 100th episode..

Hi Gary,

One quick comment…I think you should know exactly what a wine costs. You always give a range while the actual cost is displayed on screen. Would help if you knew the cost and quoted the exact price you are selling the wines for….Have your staff put a small label on the bottle or give you a cheat sheet..:)

I would like to tell all your viewers about my favorite Zinfandel. It is from a small family run winery in Sonoma called Nalle. The Nalle Zins are very nice and have lower alcohol levels then most. The 04 is 13.9% and their wines are not as hot as many other high alcohol Zins. I have had several of the highly rated Rosenblum Zins and they are always really hot and very jammy, almost like a port. The Nalle’s have wonderful flavor and balance and are not over the top fruity. Plus their label art is really fun. I would highly recommend.

Worst wine story…business dinner and ordered a bottle of Opus One. One of my assosiates who is not much into wines chugged his glass and then over poured his next glass and spilled all over the place. He had no idea that the rest of us were really into savoring the wine and wanted to try and enjoy it. I had to give him a quick lesson in how to drink and enjoy wine by the time the second bottle came so we could relax and enjoy…..

And, since I missed posting yesterday…I have to vote for Pulp Fiction and Caddyshack as best movies.

Keep up the good work, the episodes have become really fun!

Hey guys first post, and I’m not a zin fan but have a good wine horror story for ya.

Christmas 2001, first Christmas with my girl (who is now my wife). MY local wine store guy had gotten his/my hands on some Mouton-Rothschild so needless to say 1000 dollars poorer I’m happy driving home with the bottles. I leave them in the car (NY in December) to unload the gifts etc, my gf/wife volunteers the get the wine so I say no prob. Hours later when the guests starting arriving I asked her where she put the wine, she replied, right next to the fireplace!!!!!!!!!! My heart sank.
Needless to say the bottles were actually almost to hot to hold and that was the end of that. I almost made here put ” I promise never ever to touch a bottle of wine again” in our vows

Later

Later

gary! man, i am loving these surprise tasting….i wanna see a box wine get into the mix! hahaha! anyway, worst wine experience…well, i have had a few bad wines in my day, but that wasn’t the worst experience….i am a man on a budget, so with that in mind i must keep a few bottles of decent cheap stuff around so that i can enjoy at least a couple of bottles a week…you know, like a $10-15 bottle…they’re not great bottles, but sometimes they surprise you and stuff like the san felipe cab are just great for the price point. Anyway, I was busting open such a bottle (Beringer Knight’s Valley Cab) and I was with a friend….well, the SOB was corked! Well, i hate to waste wine, and i didn’t feel like trying to ship it back to your guys, so i drank the whole bottle. i mean, my buddy is just a casual wine drinker and he couldn’t tell, so being the ass that i am, i let him drink it and didn’t say anything. well, i finished that thing and i hated myself later…..my stomach hurt and i tasted the TCA for like 2 days in my mouth….it was a horrible idea, but at least i hadn’t wasted my $20….and i was able to entertain….wow, what a horrible story!

I’m an adventurous wine drinker. Recently I was in an ethnic market that just started carrying wine. I took my time looking over the selection and picked out a Romanian Pinot Noir and was very proud of myself for my bravery. I opened it a few night later — you want to talk about sugar water? Holy cow. It’s the only bottle of wine I’ve ever had where I couldn’t even finish a single glass.

BTW – I’d love to see a blind tasting. I don’t think I’ve seen you do one yet…

Hey Gary,

I understand the association of Zin and Primitivo, but i recall reading numerous sources tracing Zin to its roots in Yugoslavia, or at least somewhere in the Balkans…

Worst (most disappointing wine experience)-about one year ago, first taste of Ausone,1989,
corked,major bummer. Now some corked wines are drinkable-this one however was barely palatable!!Glad it wasnt my bottle

Hugh

Great episode Gary. Your description of the Graziano (e.g., leather glove) and especially the Passagno (tangerine?!) were vivid enough to make me want to try them. Experiencing unique and unexpected nuances of varietals is one of the things that makes the wine world go round, IMO. Consider this another vote for the idea of a WL shirt where the front would give a beaming Vey-ner-NOD and the back, complete with Wolverine hair would give the Vey-ner-CHUCK! Worst wine I ever had was my “birth year wine”. In the late 90’s a Florida colleague gave my wife the gift of ’65 Latour. Whether the fact that 1965 was one of the four worst vintages of the century, or that the wine was stored in a closet not a cellar for 30+ years — or both, there was nothing about the smell-n-slurp that remotely resembled wine. More like a death wine.
Cheers, CK

Worst wine experience – easy, and probably most unique. Two days before I am to attend a $150 wine tasting event (non-refundable) I come down with Bell’s Palsy. Unable to find a replacement I decide to go. What a waste. In addition to the difficulty in keeping the glass secure to my lips (at times unsuccessfully so) I had lost almost all of my sense of taste and smell. I could barely distinguish the difference between a first growth Bordeaux and a $10 Vins de Pays.

BTW, I really enjoyed and appreciated your descriptions of the wines in today’s episode; all the different fruits and especially the the leather glove reference. I don’t think of that as the same as saying that “a work by Picasso is simple ‘various shades of blue blended on a canvas structure to indicate to the viewer an implied emotion’.”
Keep it up!

One day I was out tasting at some of the local vineyards on Long Island and I made a comment about the inflated tasting prices to the employee and asked if anyone ever complains about this recent price surge and the woman stated, ” not on the weekends, but during the week you have some griping.” Needless to say I was there on a Thursday and the woman’s subtle shot was at the locals and you got to love how someone who is pouring wine for $5 an hour can get super snooty just because she serves wine to the rich and famous on the weekends two months a year. Did I mention Bedell sucks.
Question for you, why does anyone buy over priced long island wine anyway when there is so much more out there?
Keep up the good work , been with you since the begining, wine novice learning a lot.
Thanks,
ED

Ed R – I was just out on Long Island a few weeks ago (took the ferry over from CT when I was visiting my parents). My wife kept saying she wanted to go to Bedell. We went to 6 wineries that day and Bedell was by far and away the worst of the bunch. Absolutely horrible. I didn’t like a single wine they poured — and you’re right, they were pretentious. I really liked the Merlot that Lenz was pouring and Macari’s Block E was unreal.
TimF

My worst wine experience has to be the homemade zin we made in Nyak last Fall. We bottled it in March and I didn’t taste it until May. “Fungal jockstrap” comes to mind. Way beyond sweaty socks. Needless to say…I’m out of the business. I think I’ll just buy my zin from you from now on. PS…do you think it had anything at all to do with Nyak?

Tim F I agree with your statement about Lenz my wife and I have enjoyed a number of their wines. I’ll check out Macari and get back to you thanks for tip.

A guy I know that often has “interesting items” for sale gave me a bottle of Hungarian sparkling wine to sample. It was really not bad at all, and I sprung for a case. At $2 a bottle, why not? I brought the case to a New Year’s Eve party and was greeted like a hero. I gave the bottles out among the other party goers and kept a bottle for myself. Bait and switch? This was bait and a dozen bottles of mildly carbonated horse piss with about a pound of sugar added. I hid my bottle behind the couch, with several others, and slunk home in shame.

Hi Gary,

I’m not trying to be a know it all, but I thought I’d mention the guys at UC Davis have actually determined that the Zinfandel/Primitivo grape is actually a clone of the Crljenak grape, which was native to Croatia. Regardless of where it came from though, it makes damn good juice, if you like the style.

My pals and I watch the show and we’re enjoying it very much, but we sort of feel like just watching you tasting wines and scoring them isn’t really as satisfying as learning about the other aspects of wine. We think your viewers may enjoy episodes such as an in depth series on how to taste, how production affects the wine (Steel vs. oak aging, what malolactic fermentation does, old vines vs young vines…. etc..), flavour profiles of specific grapes and regions, climate effects on sugar and tannin levels, hot vs cool climate wines….. all those good things which have been touched on very lightly, but could use more.

For example, we partake in several tastings per year, and we always find that there’s a few people per tasting who can easily distiguish a St. Estephe from a Grave, but they never go into detail about how they know it. It feels like it’s a big secret! Revealing some of those “secrets” would be a great few episodes, I’m sure.

Just my two cents worth. In the end, we think you’re doing great, and who are we to criticize you?!

Take care.

OK, it’s time for bit of wine geekness regarding the origins of Zinfandel.

Zinfandel has been assumed to have come from Europe at some time, but the origins were uncertain. However, the work of Prof. Carol Meredith of UC Davis and her colleagues have come to a very clear conclusion. Zinfandel was not known to exist anywhere in Europe until about thirty years ago, when it was discovered that Primitivo in southern Italy was the same cultivar. This has been shown to be true using DNA markers and the work repeated in several independent labs. However, it appears that although the two grapes are genetically identical, Zin did not come to the U.S. by way of Italy.

The Dalmatian cultivar Plavac mali was suspected to be closely related to Zinfandel. Continued work demonstrated that Plavac mali was an offspring of something genetically identical to Zin crossed with another Dalmatian varietal, DobričiÄ?. Given these results, further exploration of other Dalmatian varieties eventually turned up a vine strongly resembling Zinfandel in a vineyard in KaÅ¡tela, a coastal town near the city of Split. Genetic analysis revealed that this vine, subsequently determined to be the rare cultivar Crljenak kastelanski, has the same genetic profile as Zinfandel.

Crljenak kastelanski is almost extinct in Croatia. Several vines have now been found but only in mixed plantings with other varieties. The search for more extensive plantings of Crljenak kastelanski is continuing along the coast and coastal islands.

The question of how it got from there to here is still unanswered.

The above notes are modified from the abstract of the following paper, published in:
ISHS Acta Horticulturae 603: VIII International Conference on Grape Genetics and Breeding
“THE IDENTIFICATION OF ZINFANDEL ON THE DALMATIAN COAST OF CROATIA”
Authors: E. Maletic, I. Pejic, J. Karoglan Kontic, J. Piljac, G. Dangl, A. Vokurka, T. Lacombe, N. Miroševic, C. Meredith

Zin zin, never have had it because you almost can’t get it over here, and when you have you almost surely end up with junk for an atmospheric price 🙁 . Told you to open a WL-shop over here, THAT would change the wine world!
Worst experience? Mmm, on a fair; huge importer of Italian wines in Belgium I am regular customer of, went to their stand and tasted some wines. There was a bottle of A. Longo Cacc’E Mitte di Lucera 2004. Great wine everybody says (by now, I a sure it is), so we wanted to taste it. Nose was oxidized, being carefull I first had it sniffed by my pal, said the same immediately: oxidized. So we where pretty sure about that (you know the faulty Port and pigeon droppings smell). So I said (very politely): could it be that this wine is oxidized? WOW, what did I say? And those two guys started to get out their glasses, whirling the wine around as if it was something of juice clean of a god’s ass, as to say, you know: we are the real ‘connoisseurs’. I HATE that, really I HATE that (it already showed that new nothing about it, they didn’t even know the varietals (out of 8 wines) … but you know, on a fair you always have these quick earners). And of course: No, it wasn’t. Horse shit! Grrrrr … .
Know what? A week later, I got a message for a special personified reduction for the next three months … . You know, this is so ridiculous. Just because they disrespect the (into their eyes) ‘average’ customer, they have to make it up with some ‘reduction’, instead of just apologizing at the very moment. There is nothing wrong with an oxidized wine, is it? It’s no one’s fault … . Really HATE that!

I don’t know. I’m still not totally on board with white zin yet.

Simple, white Zin-Bad, Red Zin-Good, a big fan of Zins, Pessagno higher end ones are good, most Seghesio's are good, St Francis reverse Zins are great, Baxter, Turley, Ridge, reverse Rosenblums. Most wine experience, in really learning how to buy online a number of years back, ordered a couple bottles of Kongsguard Chard like $80 a bottle and a special bottle in a reverse box of Chateau Montaganla Chard, lesson with white wine, even great wine wine, drink in tis youth…nothing worse than pouring an expensive bottle down the drain. http://www.winelx.com

Used to have allergies to red wine and stopped drinking it for 5 yrs, that has to be the worst wine experience ever.

Man I love surprises!! Hey I think this is the first episode where GV cleaned a glass with the wine instead of water. Historic Moment!