San Diego Family Hotels 
A Good Swirl
Swirling wine helps to release all its complex perfumes. If you have a good glass, swirling is easy, especially once you get the hang of it. Check out this short video from our friends at Snooth.com for a tip to get you started. Please note, this is not a professionally edited video, it is a short and sweet video to give you some Wine 101 Tips.
As I’ve said before (ad nauseum) our neighborhood is very social. We are often in our front yards talking and letting our kids play – it was a main reason we chose where we live. In that same vain, it was important for me that we buy a house with a front porch, I just love the idea of sipping wine/lemonade/insert drink here on the front porch, enjoying the day and being social with my neighbors.
While most people entertain in their backyards, we have recently undergone a major re-landscaping of our front yard with entertaining in mind.
We decided to create a low-water maintenance yard, but also something kinda Tuscan yet that lends itself nicely to our craftsman home. My husband, who sadly has been ‘put on the injured list’ for soccer has filled his time with massive amounts of research to grow wine vines. Our new and improved front yard now boasts a mini ‘urban vineyard’ (that MAY produce wine in about 5 years), a little stone patio where as soon as we put a table and chairs will provide a lovely seating area for us and our friends and neighbors, a mini meandering pathway (aka, the mini bike track for the kids), and low fence – again a seating area for us and our neighbors (aka, a barrier from doggies pooping). Here are some pictures of our new Front Yard Entertainment area – I can’t wait to host a mini get together and celebrate summer.
Here is the Before:
And now…for the After Shots:
We love finding new blogs to feature and we LOOOOOVE wine, so when my husband forwarded me this blog, Snooth.com that is all about wine (and recently about spirits too), I just knew I would enjoy it.
Today’s ezine article from Snooth is about decanting your wine. My husband and I recently bought a really cool wine aerator called the Soiree Wine Aerator that you attach to your bottle and we also decant into a beautiful clear glass pitcher. We do this mostly for the taste, but there truly is something decadent about drinking wine that has been poured lovingly into a decanter – kinda makes me feel like I’m travelling or out to dinner at a place where they decant it for you. As always we believe life should be celebrated – use your good dishes even when there are no guests and decant your wine just for yourself because you’re worth it;)
Here’s a snippet of the article from Snooth.com as well as the link to the full article:
Wine 101: Decanting
Why you should let your best bottles breathe
After last week’s introductory Wine 101 email, I thought the logical next step would be tips on serving wine. Now, I know you’d all rather dive right in to the wine once it’s open, but the truth is that there are several factors worth exploring to make sure you get the most out of your bottle.
There are three main points I will be covering in the next few installments: Decanting wine, the serving temperatures for different wine types, and how to select your wine glasses, each of which can have a major impact on how a wine shows. Unfortunately, even if you get everything right there are still a slew of things that can go wrong – over which we have sadly little say.
Since things like the quality of the cork (or alternate closure), barometric pressure, and winemaking faults are beyond our control, we might as well focus on what we can do to make each wine show us all its got!
Read the Full Article »
My husband has started his own urban vineyard in our front yard. It is a very exciting prospect as we both love wine and vineyards and are having our front yard re-landscaped to accomodate this new look. Our neighbors who don’t know what’s going on probably think we’re just planting sticks in a mound, but when it’s all grown in, it will look beautiful and very different for an urban neighborhood.
Chris has been documenting his planting progress in in-depth detail for anyone else wanting to plant their own urban vineyard on his blog, Urban Vining. Along with documenting this progress, he blogs on other wine topics including the article below that talks about good red wine pairings for fish. Read on and bon appetite!
Something Fishy, Red Wine Comes – May 7, 2010 3:36 pm by Chris Henry at UrbanVining.com
White wines have just not resonated with me yet. When it came to fish for dinner, in most cases, I just simply had water until after dinner when I’d look forward to a glass or two of red on it’s own. Occasionally I would try some lighter reds with some fish like salmon.
Well, for those like me, this article from Snooth provides some background on the topic as well as offers some recommended reds to pair with various fish. Read the comments from subscribers for additional suggestions. One recommendation I would suggest, that worked for me in the past was Valpolicella with Salmon.
My friend Patrick Bartlett (I call him a friend even though we’ve only technically met once, but immediately fell madly in friend with each other – well I did anyway) is my resident ‘wine go-to guy’. Patrick’s blog, Disogno is chalk full of info, wisdom and wit as it relates to wine and food. Recently, I found myself perusing around his blog and found this witty post about being a ‘wine snob’. I agree, I think I am more of a wine geek than a wine snob. The word snob infers such an ugly connotation of being the type of person who only drinks expensive wine. Far from the case in my case, but I have managed to make my palate a more sophisticated one than once upon a time – after all, practice makes perfect;)
Here is the witty article from Patrick. If you like it, be sure to check out his blog for many others:
Let me start by saying, I consider myself more of a wine geek than a wine snob. As someone who’s vocation is wine, I meet people all the time who love to share their favorite wines, favorite labels, and demonstrate their considerable knowledge about wine. I suck at remembering labels, or the name of a given iconic wine maker, or wine, but I digress; In my humble opinion (so says the narcissist!) there is one dead give-away that nails a bona fide wine snob. Legs… yes I said legs.
I vividly remember trying to join the wine club in the glorious yuppie dominated 80s. It was common to sit around the back yard on a nice summer day sipping the iconic oak aged California Chardonnay – known as a big, buttery, spicy Chardonnay. We used to swirl the wine and then watch with rapt attention as it slowly slid down the side of the glass, leaving behind rivulets of wine called legs (or tears in France). These legs were the topic of many a “quality” conversation. “Oh, look at those legs”, “they are so heavy”, “must be a very good bottle of wine!” Of course, no one really knew what the legs really meant, but they sure were cool… and truly, legs create beautiful patterns on the side of a wine glass.
But frankly, they have NOTHING to do with the quality of the wine. Yet the leg-lore persists, only now, when someone brings up legs, those of us (ok, so maybe we are snobs too) in the business give each other the knowing look… “oh, it’s one of them”, “let’s have some fun, let’s ask them what they think about those legs”. So, I’m here to help you. I’m here to save you from the “leg” faux pas! Legs offer two basic clues about a wine, and have NOTHING to do with its quality. The two elements are
- Sugar
- Alcohol
Both are a lesson in physics. Alcohol has to do with evaporation and surface tension on the glass. Sugar has to do with viscosity. In both instances, legs offer clues about the wine, but that’s all! So the next time you’re out tasting you can either bate your fellow wine snobs with their “leg” knowledge (like I commonly will) or be an anecdotal kook (again, like me) and tell them what the legs really mean. In either case, knowing the truth will set you free from the sniggers of the wine geeks of the world! Or, if you want to be truly cosmopolitan, comment on the tears!
Our friends at The Wine Club sent us a wee bit of fun information that we thought our readers would like to have handy as well.
First, seriously there’s a wine bottle big enough to hold 20 bottles of wine? Where have you been all my life?
FUN WINE FACTS
How big can a wine bottle get?
Capacity (Liters) followed by the number of standard size bottles contained:
Standard (.75) 1
Magnum (1.5) 2
Jeroboam (3) 4
Rehoboam (4.5) 6
Methuselah (6) 8
Salmanazar (9) 12
Balthazar (12) 16
Nebuchadnezzar (15) 20
Now, on to the good stuff, wine tasting for the beginner. My wine tasting days started long ago and there was once a time when my palate was quite ‘sophisticated’. Alas, I am now a Mom of a 2 year old and while I still enjoy plenty of wine (trust me sometimes it’s the perfect way to round off my day), my days of ‘wine tasting’ are much more limited. But, I digress, wine tasting doesn’t require a certain sophistication, or experience. What it requires is a love (or even a like) of wine and an opinion, because let’s face it, good wine is wine that you like. To help you really understand the nuances of wine tasting, however, we’ve included a great article from TheWineClub.ws. Cheers!
A simple 5-step process of tasting wine is a helpful tool for better understanding and appreciating your wine. This process helps you gain a better understanding of the the overall wine tasting experience.
Follow These Steps:
- Sight
- Smell
- Taste
- Touch
- Overall Impression
Sight:
Take a look at the color of the wine. Look for the clarity of the wine and the brilliance of the color. Wine will vary in intensity of color. Pick up the glass by the stem and hold the glass towards a natural light source or against a white background such as a tablecloth or white paper.
Note the color and clarity of the wine. White wines can range from straw yellow to a deep gold. Red wines can be inky purple, brick red, or many shades in between. Intensity of color is sometimes a signal of a wine with a heavier body.
Smell:
Exploring the aromas of wine is an important step to enjoying the full tasting experience of the wine. Our sense of smell is more fine-tuned than our sense of taste, so many of the complex subtleties in wine are actually better observed through smell over taste.
Swirl the wine in your glass by rotating your wrist. Most people have trouble at first. The key is in the wrist. Rotate the wrist while holding the rest of the arm still. The swirling of the glass releases the wine’s aromas to the top edge of the glass.
Place your nose just over and the edge of the wine glass. Keep your mouth open. The aromas should bounce off this edge straight up the nostrils. Take a very deep sniff. Identify any familiar smells. Repeat, but rest your sense of smell a few seconds before you smell again.
Common aromas you may notice are floral, citrus, and tropical fruit for white wines, or berry, dried fruit, and spice for red wines.
Taste:
The human tongue can only taste five primary flavors: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory. However, by slurping in a small amount of air along with the wine, we can use our sense of smell again to help us “taste” more flavors.
1. Initial taste: This is where the wine initially hits your taste buds and they respond to the sensations.
2. Taste: Slosh the wine around and draw in some air. Examine the body and texture. Is it light or full? Smooth or spicey?
3. Finish: The taste that remains in your mouth after you have swallowed the wine. How long did the taste last? Was it pleasant?
Describe the flavors you taste. You may notice some of the same fruit, floral or spice flavors that you noticed while smelling the wine. You may also notice some of the five tastes, such as sweetness on the tip of your tongue, sour from the acidity of the wine, or slight bitterness from the tannins.
Touch:
The body of a wine can be described as light, medium, or full. White wines such as a Sauvignon Blanc is considered light-bodied, while reds like Cabernet Suavignon or Shiraz are usually medium to full-bodied wines.
Overall Impression:
Combine your impressions of the wine’s appearance, aromas, taste, body, and finish.
Evaluate the various aspects of the wine and how they work together. A good wine will have a balance the the elements, and each individual characteristic should combine to create a nice blend of taste sensations.
Feb 142010
Acidity: The essential natural component which gives wine freshness and prevents cloying
Aroma: The particular smell of a grape variety
Balance: A balanced wine has its fruitiness, acidity, tannin and alcohol in ‘balanced’ harmony. Balance can develop with age.
Body: A full-bodied wine fills the mouth with flavor. A light bodied wine is delicate on your palette. Full body can also be described as having weight.
Bouquet: The overall smell of a wine. You are often able to smell various aromas as the wine opens up. Try first smelling the wine, then swirling it and then smelling it again to smell how the wines aroma has opened up.
Cloying: A sickly flavor to poor sweet wines.
Complex: Just as the word describes, the wine is multidimensional often producing a mixture of tastes and smells as it travels over the tongue and as it opens up.
Corked: The bad smell and taste of wine caused by an affected cork. This is why many winemakers are moving towards the ‘rubber’ cork or the twist top.
Crisp: Fresh wine with good acidity. Usually referred to with white wines.
Finish: The aftertaste of the wine after you’ve spit it out or swallowed it. It’s the flavor that is left on your tongue.
Method Chamenoise: The method of sparkling wine used in Champagne. This method was created in Champagne, France and thus only sparkling wines made in Champagne, France can use the name Champagne. All others must use sparkling wine, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t also use the same method. Cava, for example, also uses the same method.
Nose: The smell or aroma of the wine.
Oaky: The flavor given to wine by oak barrels.
Palate: Basically, it’s your tongue. The taste and what you taste with. Although, you taste with more than just your tongue – the aroma is a huge factor in how you taste the wine. You will notice when you have a cold that food tastes different and wine is no exception.
Soft: Smooth, easy to drink, mellow wine.
Tannin: The substance in red wine which comes from the grape skins, stems and pips and gives the mouth-drying sensation. It is necessary for wine to age, but many people are not fans of high tannin wines. My husband calls it ‘grippy’, others may refer to it as a cotton mouth feeling.
Tart: When a wine has too much acidity, it is referred to as tart.
Tired: When the wine is no longer at its best.
Varietal: Describes the specific grapes used in the wine when being sold. Ex. Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay.
Vintage: The year the grape was harvested. This is not the year the wine was bottled.
