Happy Holidays from Novice Wine Blog

Happy Holidays from Novice Wine Blog (Jeff and Lucinda Phillips). We look forward to adding recepie reviews, book reviews, and a lot of other potentially interesting/useful postings on our blog. In 2008, it wont be just about wine as I have a whole lot more I would like to blog about. I hope you come back often.

Enjoy the Holidays and drink responsibly.

2005 Greg Norman Shiraz

Well, it's a good thing that Greg Norman can golf. I have searched the Internet for a similiar view of this wine, and everyone seems to love it. I had a hard time finishing this bottle. It is a reasonably priced wine (around $15.00) and it can be found easily enough.

The bottle and just about every other wine site talks about subtle tannins, and I found the wine to be bitter. The aroma was nice, the alcohol content was respectable, and the color was very nice. I just wasn't won over by the taste. I found it to lack the spicy/peppery tones of other shiraz wines that I have come to enjoy.

I give this wine a 2 out of 5 and recommend that for the price, you try it if you want. You may be dissapointed, but you won't be out a lot of money.

Blue River Riesling 2006

We prepared apricot poppy seed chicken with dill potatoes and opened a bottle of Blue River Riesling.

The Blue River Riesling has an alcohol content of 9.5% which in my opinion makes it a very light wine.

Inspecting the bottle, it reminds me of a Grey Goose Vodka bottle with frosted glass and a clear center with a colorful graphic in the background.

The wine is a clear blond color and fades on the edge of the wine glass. I asked Lucinda to take a sip and tell me what she tasted. She took a drink, paused, and described pear, peach, citrus, and a slight carbonation/effervescence. Wow, it was almost like she was reading the back of the bottle. I took a sip and was surprised to find hints of green apple mixed in with the peach and pear flavors of this mild wine. The wine had a pear/apple/peach aroma to match the taste.

The low alcohol content I believe contributed to the light short finish on the pallet. We found it to be a fun wine when paired with the right meal, or a fun wine just by itself. It was very light and refreshing and would make a great summer wine.

We purchased the wine at Sams Club for around 15 bucks.

Overall, we gave the wine a 3 out of 5.

Fat Bastard Merlot 2005

Last night Lucinda and I prepared sliced steak and mushrooms with warm potato salad. It was a good dinner, and we washed it down with a bottle of 2005 Fat Bastard Merlot.

The wine is extremely full bodied. It is also how it obtained its name Fat Bastard.

The next day after sleeping in past noon due to the late night before, Thierry thought he would have Guy try an experimental wine he had in a few barrels in the back of the cellar. “Dis is a experiment wine we left it on de lees. We try it no?” “Sure Thierry, you know how hard it is to get me to try a new wine.” Both friends had no idea that leaving the wine in barrel on the lees (yeast cells) would result is such a dramatic difference from the wine they tried the day before. It had a wonderful color and rich, round palate. Both men stood and stared at each other for what seemed like five minutes until Thierry exclaimed “now zat iz what you call eh phet bast-ard” Guy laughed with a belly laugh you could clearly hear in the neighboring town. He had used the expression Fat bastard often to describe things that were great but hearing it in a French accent made it so much funnier.

The wine had a great bouquet and taste, but I found it to be a bit tannic for my taste. I believe the 2005 will be much better in about a year or two.

We paid around $15 for the wine (not a lot of options for competitive shopping here in Madisonville KY). Lucinda really liked the wine and I just found it to be ok. It is inexpensive, has a good flavor, great color, good bouquet, but should probably age just a little bit more.

Lucinda gives it a 3.5 and I would have to hover closer to 3 and since I am the one writing this review, we will go with 3.

Rating:

Wine Without Borders

I live in Kentucky, and I can't get wine shipped to me. I would love to join a wine of the month club, but alas, the world is unjust. But wait, there might be hope on the horizon. Tom Wark at Fermentation acts as Executive Director for the Specialty Wine Retailers Association. They have started a blog called Wine Without Borders

Wine Without Borders will try to do some heavy lifting by being the ongoing communication vehicle for issues surrounding direct shipping. That means keeping you up to date on legal, legislative, political and philosophical issues concerning this issue. It turns out that the the interests of retailers are the interests of consumers. It's this conversion of interests that allows retailers to be always on the side of consumers on this issue.

Currently wine may be shipped only to the following states; AK, CA, DC, FL, HI, IA, ID, IL, LA, MN, MO, ND, NE, NH, NM, NV, OH, OR, TX, VA, WA, WV, WY.

Give the site a look, visit Toms blog, and put a link to Wine Without Borders on your blog and help spread the word.

Novice Wine Snob is now Novice Wine Blog

After several years of running my own business, I have been approached and have decided to sell the business and retire. Now that I have a lot of free time on my hands, I have decided to start a wine blog for the wine challenged (like me). I wanted to do this as a way to chronicle my learning experience from total wine novice to someone who might be able to talk intelligently about wine.

I initially set up a blog over at wordpress called novicewinesnob.wordpress.com. This was a free hosted account and it was easy to use because it was wordpress. What I didn't like about it is the lack of customization, the inability to monetize the blog with adwords, the inability to install 3rd party scripts, and the fact that wordpress was randomly displaying adwords of their own on my blog. That really pissed me off.

I already had the google account that featured a link to set up a blogger.com blog, but I wasn't that familiar with the process.

After about 2 hours of tinkering around, I have launched Novice Wine Blog. I think I am going to like it here. I can monetize, install third party scripts, have full control of the templates, and I can install google analytics.

I dont know about the anti spam capabilities of this blog software just yet, but so far, I like it. Now all I need is a little love from Google.

Clos du Bois 2004 Merlot

Varietal Composition: 90% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% other Alcohol: 13.5% Vintage: 2004 Acid/pH: 0.52/3.60 Released: December 2006 Appellation: North Coast

I was sitting on the front porch of my houseboat this past Friday evening and Lucinda and I opened a bottle of Clos du Bois Merlot. It had been a particularly frustrating day and we were ready to see it come to an end. We opened this bottle and poured our first glass. The first thing we noticed was the color of the wine. It was a deep ruby red and it even "looked" silky as we poured it into our glasses.The bouquet of the wine was rather inviting and seemed to beckon to us to drink it. I cant say that I detected any currants or vanilla or black cherries, but it just smelled good.The look of the wine was not deceiving. It tasted as silky as it poured.The wine had a strong finish, or should I say a long finish as the flavor sat on the back of my throat and tongue. With each sip I could feel the stress of the day washing away.We did not drink this wine with any meal, yet I would recommend it as a great pairing with just about anything, even a great big juicy grilled burger.Now, for the rating part. I would have to definitely give this a 4 something rating. Why 4 something? Because I haven't picked an icon for ratings yet.How about Glass Fish? RATING:

Developing A Wine Rating Scale

I know there are some solid (been used a long time) wine rating scales out there. I just find most of them to be rather subjective, and quite frankly, they confuse or concern me. On the Robert Parker model wines are rated from 50 to 100 points with wines that score 50 - 60 deemed as being unacceptable and wines that score 95 - 100 as being an extraordinary wine. The UC Davis model rates wines on a 20 point scale and anything that scores less than a 9 are below commercial acceptability while wines scoring 17 or better are of outstanding characteristics.

Unfortunately, none of this tells me if I am going to like the wine or not. And, consequently, doesn't provide a good way for me to rate the wine if I am going to recommend it to anyone else.

This is why, for the purpose of this wine blog, I am going to attempt to put together my own rating system. Now, you have to be asking yourself, how does this confessed wine novice think he is going to pull off inventing his own wine rating scale? Why would anyone take it seriously? Good question. My answer is this, The Wall Street Journal uses a Yech - Delicious! rating scale. The New York Times uses a no stars - 4 Stars rating scale. Surely the one I come up with for the sake of this blog couldn't be any more mathematically vague than those used by respected publications. Even if I decide to develop a 25 point system where I rate the wine based on color, aroma, taste, alcohol level, and price, at least it would be something I could defend if someone were to ask me how I derived my rating of the wine. Or, I could just make up a number ranging from 80 to 90.

Ok, lets expand on that for a bit. How about if we do a 25 point rating system? Like Festivus for the Rest of Us, this scale will be used to rate wines for the every day schmoe who just likes to drink wine and appreciates a bargain. That's why I am going to include pricing into my rating system. I know, I know. Value for money is an eternal issue in the wine world. But, there is the argument made by RestaurantWine.com that says;

Other rating systems, which group inexpensive with expensive wines are not especially useful, since higher price wines are almost always given higher scores than lower priced wines. Because the crucial factor in wine purchasing is--and always will be--selling price, and how that selling price relates to the quality of the wine in the bottle, our system uncovers the best values in multiple price niches better than any other.

And...

the use of points projects a halo of objectivity around wine evaluations, inferring that wine quality can be measured absolutely, which it absolutely cannot;

I couldn't agree more. I also like their decision to use pricing in their rating system, but I also see where their ratings could be taken out of context. This is why we will be rating wines that we group into pricing categories. Our pricing categories will be;

• $10 and Under


• $11 to $25


• $26 to $50


• $51 to $75


• $76 to $100


• $101 and over

Or something close to that. Whatever. So, using the pricing classification, you can distinguish between a well rated $30 bottle of wine, and a well rated $80 bottle of wine. I have had a bottle of Opus One and have enjoyed a Stags Head wine just as much. Value is subjective and and can only truly be weighted based on the consumer flipping the bill.

We are also going to use a 5 star rating system, or 5 fish, or 5 beach umbrellas, or whatever graphic we decide to use to brand or mark our rating scale. 5 groups of grapes, 5 wine glasses, 5 x's, you get the idea.

Our rating criteria will be color, aroma, taste, finish, and price. 5 stars potentially for each category. The final rating will be the average of the five rating criteria scores. The worst, or course, would be 1 something (frog, pencil, globe, etc..) and the highest would be 5 something. Thanks for reading this far and I am looking forward to posting my first extremely criticized (expect to get hammered by the wine community at large) wine rating.

Learning How To Rate A Wine

I sit and wonder just how to start this blog and decide that I just need to jump in feet first. Please bear with me as I pour out unorganized thoughts on the screen.

My first goal is to learn how to rate wines. I figured that I couldn't have a wine blog that anyone would take seriously if I couldn't even properly rate a wine. I know if I like a wine I'm drinking, and I know when I don't like one. It's a pretty simple concept that works for me, but it really won't fly with anyone who might read this blog. Keeping that in mind, I'm going to try to learn from some of the best wine blogs online.

One of the funniest and probably most honest entries I read came from Brentwood Wine Company titled Confessions of a Wine Novice. This one pretty much summed up where I am in my journey. Complete novice. I can handle the color depth part of judging a wine because I used to own a highly ranked web development firm and learned a thing or two about color. I can probably make that transition. The color hue bit is something I think I can handle too. Clarity? Sure, either its clear or not. The aroma area is where I get into trouble. I have a big enough nose to take on the most formidable glass of wine, I just don't think it is developed enough to determine the bouquet. I don't know whether I detected hints of blackberry jam with light pepper spices finishing with tones of violets. I've never eaten a violet. I don't know weak from astringent, tart from flabby, light from full bodied or dry from off dry. I only know if I like it or not and whether I would recommend it to a friend or not.

That brings me to my task of learning how to rate a wine. There are several scales being used around the world from the Robert Parker / Wine Spectator 100 point scale to the Jancis Robinson 20 Point Scale. There are 5 Star Scales, 4 Star Scales, 3 Star Scales and even a Bond Rating Scale. 1 fish, 2 fish, red fish, blue fish. There is a great PDF provided by Steve de Long that shows all of the popular wine rating scales used around the world. Steve de Long also provides a fantastic Guided Tasting Note form. All you other novice wine snobs should take a look at these.

Now that I am armed with the collective infinite wisdom that is the Internet, I am ready to take on the challenge of learning how to properly rate a wine. Keep reading. This is about to get real fun, or real tragic. Either way, you won't be able to look away.