I'm Going to Whine a Bit Here...

I was at my favorite Sumner restaurant last month with James and I partook of their $5 wine tasting they have on Wednesday nights, or was it a Thursday nights, I forget.  Sorci's is a hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant that has great food.  The owner is a wine afficianado and loves to have wine tastings and actually has a huge collection to select from, considering the tiny size of the place.  So this particular Wednesday, or Thursday, his offering was from his sweeter wine selections.  I love sweet wines, so this particular tasting was a go for me.

It was a lovely evening sitting at their antique marble bar (their other 5 tables were full, so we had to sit at the bar that night) enjoying our food and my sweet little tastings. While waiting for our food, I started reading some of the descriptions of the wines that were laying around in various holders there on the bar.  One hit me as particularly hilarious.  I dug in my purse and grabbed my business card and started scribbling the notation down so I would have it for later blogging.  I couldn't pass up the description for the 2007 Catena Malbec.

A sleek, polished style, with alluring mocha and raspberry ganache notes leading the way, backed by dark plum, hoisin sauce and graphite flavors that push through the finish. This has serious weight, but stays focused and driven.  (I didn't make up this punctuation - truly.)

What in the heck does that mean?!!??  Graphite?  Hoisin sauce?  I'm thinking that the vintners were sipping a little too much of the product before creating their little wine-blurb.  Answer me this: how does a wine stay focused and driven?  What does graphite taste like?  Did they throw in some pencils and left over sauce from their lunchtime chinese takeout?

It got me thinking about other descriptors and decided to go do some research.  Here are a few of my favorites that I found off of the Wine Library web site.

2006 Perrin Christins Vacqueyras - Very racy, with lots of red and black currant fruit backed by a great graphite spine. Offers nice hints of licorice, spice and iron on the finish.  Iron?  Graphite spine?

2008 Keller Klaus Westhofen Kirchspiel Riesling Trocken - ...On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and very, very pure and seamless, with a rock solid core of fruit, bright acids, superb focus and a classic shape on the very long, racy and laser-like finish. Just a superb bottle in the making.

2005 L'arlot Les Suchots Vosne Romanee - Deep, bright red. Sexy aromas and flavors of bitter cherry, redcurrant, minerals, cocoa powder and flowers. Lush and sweet, with a texture of liquid velvet. Boasts wonderful subtle depth and explosive inner-mouth perfume. A wine of great class and finesse, but also has the strength for a brilliant evolution in bottle. This stains the palate with perfume in a way that just about no pinot made outside Burgundy can imitate.  My palate will be stained; oh dear. I wonder if that will ruin me for other wines in the future; though I would like to find out what liquid velvet tastes like.

2006 Chateau Pape Clement - The dense purple-colored 2006 boasts an extraordinary perfume of lead pencil shavings, creme de cassis, burning embers, and a sensation that can only be described as like walking through a damp forest on a hot, humid day...  Lead pencil shavings?  Burning embers?  Oh,  the walk through the forest sounds nice, unless of course, you're near a marsh with skunk cabbage, or you are in close proximity of some rutting elk; then not so much.

I'm sure there's some wine afficiando out there somewhere who could tell me that some of these words are really important.  There is probably some secret de-coder ring that other wine nuts know about, telling one exactly what to expect from the wine.  But hey, I'm not a wine afficiando.  They sound just plain weird to me.

Reaching Out to the People!

The Birminham Cathedral is going to new heighths to reach non-church goers. In an article on Sep 2 2008 By Rhona Ganguly, The Birmingham Post states that the "Birmingham Cathedral could be doing its own fund-raising version of turning holy water into wine as it considers plans for a wine bar." A wine bar? I wonder if it is about reaching souls or could it be that it's all about money?

On August 31, 2008, Jonathan Wynne-Jones of UK's Daily Telegraph, reports that the cathedral's leaders are exploring various opportunities to engage new parishoners and are considering opening a wine bar. Church leaders state that "The new appraoch to attracting and retaining worshippers could become a blueprint for dioceses across the country." The goal is to have a more business-like approach to their operations.

The Birmingham Post goes on to say that Mr. Hope-Urwin, part of the clergy there at the cathedral, says “We’re not trying to encourage drinking, but the cathedral has to engage more with the city and find ways of meeting people on their territory. Cathedral wine bars should be seen as a potential commercial operation with profits going into the upkeep and of the building and paying for evangelistic work.

I can see it now; forget the lattes and coffee before services. Bring on the wine! Folks can come in sippin' and a swirlin' their reds and whites, offering tidbits of wine wisdom prior to hitting the Sunday evening Bible Study. Do you think they'll remember anything?

What's next? Valet parking? Oh wait, I've seen that before too. Ahh, the sacrificial life - bring it on!