When are you going to start using the proper glass per wine instead of mixing them all in the glass. Dont drink Port with out decanting it first, com on pally pull up your socks!

All this talk about beer reminded me that I do like beer now and again and have even gone so far as to brew my own from time to time — I’m a really hands on kind of guy. The funny thing about beer is that it’s made in nearly the exact same way as sparkling wine.

So this brings me to a question for the group: I want to make my own wine. I’ve even gone so far as to plant a row of seyval blanc vines in my back yard. This is their first year in the ground so I don’t anticipate being able to make any wine for a couple of more years. But I’ve done some research and see that there are grape juice concentrates made for the sole purpose of making wine. Has anyone out there used these? Any recommendations?

Great episode…I ran into a bottle of Clos Mimi Syrah (not the one you had, it’s just a plain old Syrah, I believe it was an ’04) and it had freakin’ 19.5% alcohol!!!! I quickly put that thing down, figuring I won’t buy that until Port season comes around, so I’m curious, what was the alcohol percent of the one you tried?

As for favorite drink w/ alcohol would have to be just a good old ice cold beer in a frosty mug. I’ll do cheap or nice beer, they are ALL welcome in my home. I don’t like those bitter ones though.

As for non-alcohol, water’s good, but that’s more for when I’m not thinking about it, I really like sparkling water in a glass with ice and a slice of lime. And in the morning, hot tea, but like Jaye a few reply’s back, I like real tea leaves, not the bagged stuff.

So your Jets lost…well, at least they didn’t get beat by the Cardinals like my Bears did.

SEe you later,
T

Oh ya, and go Bears!
T

Tony S. — The Bears are terrible. Why do they insist on starting their worst QB?

Hi Gary,

My Wife and I drink a lot of wine but we ususally do not plan far enough in advance and pull a bottle out of our cellar at 55 degrees, wait as long as we can (usually not long) and drink.
You have talked recently about wines that you have opened hours before tasting and wines you have tasted the next day and the wine really opened up. You even mentioned dropping off wine at a resteraunt early in the day before dining with a special bottle of wine. My question has multiple parts….
1. How long should a bottle be opened before consuming to make sure it is at it’s best?
2. How should a wine be kept overnight if the whole bottle is not consumed? Is the wine still good the next day?
3. When buying wine by the glass in a resteraunt should I be concerned about how long it has been opened? How long is too long?

When not drinking wine, I like a Grey Goose Gimlet. Which is GG, splash of Roses lime juice and a big slab of lime….can be drank on the rocks or up like a martini. Also like many kinds of beer and like to drink the beer of the country of the food I am eating. Been into Weiss Beers latley and like Hackershor with a nice slice of lemon.

Also my condolences on the passing of your friend. He sounded like a great man who loved wine.

I am just catching up on the last few episodes, have you come up with a sign off yet? How about….”I Spit so you do not have to”

Thanks,

Bruce

favorite drinks besides wine, well I came to wine from the other way I love scotch single malts and blends, micro-brew beers & imports,small batch burbons,premium vodkas, sugar cane based rums, and premium tequlia.

Gary, I wonder if you could include your surprise “home run hitters” onto your list of suggested/recommeded wines that are accessible through the WL home page. For example, it seems that you are up on the Castano Hecla 2003 and on the Clos Mimi Petite Rousse 2004. So please include these to the stagnant list that includes sharpshooter and the like. This would be a great quick pick guide for anyone looking to heed your advise. And congrats on your 80th episode… thousands more to go!

it doesn’t surprise me at all that people would be asking you to taste a bad wine…a ot of people like bad wine…there needs to be some sort of course to teach people what wine is supposed to taste like. i mean, wine should not be pigeon-holes, but at the same time there is a taste that is the mark of a truly great wine. i think the main idea here is complexity…people need to understand that a great wine has complexity of taste…that may mean that your first taste of the wine is somewhat awkward…you might not know what you think when you first taste it, but it should grow on you if it is good…the flavors will fill your mouth, it will NOT drink like WATER! smooth does not mean, easy for people to drink….it means that you don’t notice anything out of place as it goes down….okay, there is my rant…stop drinking crappy wine! thanks gary for the review.
QOTD: is there another drink besides wine? okay…i like a nice crown reserve on the rocks, but i don’t really drink the hard stuff any longer…not since i discovered the great deals at winelibrary.com…hahaha

hey bruce…i just read your post…i have to tell you that i have a great way to store wine if you do not drink the whole bottle the first night. buy a vacu-vin…use it…pump til you can’t pump no more….throw the bottle in the fridge…yes, even red wine….then break it out about 2-3 hours before you plan drinking it (red), open and enjoy. the cold slows the ‘bad’ aging down to the perfect pace…most of the wines i do this with (which is a lot considering i drink only half bottles at a time by myself) usually taste better the next day…especially good cabs and bordeaux (that is what i mostly drink…a few italians have showed well with this technique)….just thought i would send that out to you man…try it. there have been a couple of bottles that this did not work so well for, but these bottles were not good when opened…sometimes you get a bottle with either an acidic tinge, or just a bad, what i like to call ‘heavy’, taste to them…this technique will not help these bottles…their just bad bottles…the more complexity and flavor…the better this works. cheers

oh yeah…1 day is all i would suggest with this technique…although some really good wines, and even some only decent wines, have shown well with up to 2…i would stick with 1 though

Gary…it’s been a couple of episodes, work has been killing me!

Diet Pepsi / Water
Homemade Pilsner

And that’s pretty much it!

B

favorite non-wine bev?– a glorious, extra-dirty martini…  belvedere, grey goose, or pravda vodka.

Good episode, I love it when you can find good values. My favorite non-wine beverage is Knob Creek bourbon on the rocks.

Agree with zerokreap on the vacu-vin. I find it works really well with whites (up to 3 days of extra drinkable life in my experience), agree on the 1-day recommendation for reds, and if a wine isn’t really good don’t bother pumping because the impurities and imbalance quickly overpower the wine. For both white and red I find the better the wine the better the “save” ability of pumping.

to Russ j #27,Joe Walton is alive and living inBeaver county,pa and still the head coach at Robert Morris Univ. He always has a cigar in his mouth[never lights it]

Gary

Great Episode 92 point

I drink Coffee, Diet Coke and Wine usually in that order.

I’m a newbie to the blog here, and not much of a wine connoisseur. My alcoholic beverage of choice is beer; it’s very hard to pick a favorite but I really like the American Barley Wines. Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine Style Ale is a winter seasonal and one of my favorites. It ages really well too. Floral, hoppy India Pale Ales are also great, like Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA and Rogue I2PA. For those interested in learning more about beer, beeradvocate.com is an excellent resource. I don’t really like soda; I mainly drink lots of water and beer in moderation. Recently I’ve been enjoying single malt scotches from Glenmorangie and Macallan and some blended Canadian whiskies like Crown Royal and Chivas Regal.

When not drinking wine I drink Kettle One dirty martinis. Thanks for reviewing the Mimi; they were very friendly and poured generously of some very good wine. They deserve all the positive publicity you can give them. Their wines are definitely value priced.

Gary,
Excellent EP, with variety in the wines and the topics. I really appreciated your comments about personal palate changes when answering SAFSAMâ??s question. Back in 93/94 one of our favorite Cab contenders for 8-12 dollar tastings was Chateau Souverain. For the money seemed to deliver decent fruit on the nose and in the mouth, but was favored because it tends to be forward. As with the times the price increased, and they might have been guilty of goosing it higher toward 20 because of good reviews/scores over the years. Iâ??ve not tried Souverain for about three years, but last time I did it did not seem as good as the earlier days. Now Iâ??m curious to give it another shot. However my expectations are low, not because of your â??passâ? review, but because I know my taste has changed, and hopefully it is more educated than it used to be. A related point is that there are a huge number of wines that are fabulous *and* come in under 15, just as you showed us today Gary with the Mimi — totally jazzed about that one!! QOTD: Thank you Susan! You reminded me of my favorite non-alc beverage: Ting, especially with a splash of aromatic bitters.

Water

Yo, Gary do your Russian family members really drink French wine? Ouch!

Gary…being that I turned 21 in Germany I acquired the taste for something that would translate into “Diesel” in Germany they will sometimes mix coke-a-cola and their beers. While I was deployed in Korea there was no access to German beer and I started drinking Heineken beer with Pepsi. So my other drink of choice….is 50% Heinecen and 50% pepsi…

Besides wine, my favorite drinks are:

Alcoholic – Barbancourt Haitian rum (15 year old), neat, just the two of us for a thoughtful, civilized sit-down together, often reading a book.

Non-Alcoholic – Diet Coke, on a hot day, the 12 oz can cold out of the machine, no substitute.

In-Between – Good fall farmstand apple cider, when it starts to ferment on its own in the bottle so you get that special zip and bouquet (doesn’t always happen).

QOTD – Club Soda with Lime is my favorite drink……..