100 Wine Blogs, 100 Days Blog 26 Do you want to have an online wine tasting with sparklers?

26. Do you want to have an online wine tasting with sparklers?

Let’s start our wine tasting by reviewing the labels on the bottles, what each Web site has to say about their wines and the price of each. The two wines that we are reviewing are Korbel Brut, California Champagne and Schramsberg, Blanc de Blancs, Brut Sparkling Wine, Vintage 2006.


Korbel Web site:

Korbel Brut is America’s favorite methode champenoise champagne. It is used to celebrate more weddings, anniversaries, and New Year’s Eves than any other quality champagne. The goal is to make a champagne that consistently delivers a lot of quality for the price. Korbel Brut is crisp and refreshing, with a light citrus and fresh pear-like note in the finish.


Schramsberg Web site:

The first wine Schramsberg produced in 1965 and was America’s first commercially produced, Chardonnay-based brut sparkling wine. Small lots of malolactic-and barrel-fermented wines are added for complexity. The wine is aged on the yeast lees in the bottle for about two years prior to disgorgement. With its vibrant, fruitful and crisp nature, this sparkling wine will maintain its freshness, structure and refined finish for many years, even decades following its initial release.


KORBEL

Label:
Established 1882
Methode Champenoise
Korbel
California Champagne
Brut
Alcohol: 12%
Produced and Bottled by F. Korbel & Bros., Inc.
Greenville, Sonoma Co., California

Not on Label:
A blend of multiple varieties from multiple appellations and even multiple years.
Harvested: Non-vintage Blend
Appellation: California
Composition: Pinot Noir, Chenin Blanc, French Colombard, Chardonnay
Dosage: 1.00%
Production: 750,000 cases annually

$9.99 US Dollars


SCHRAMSBERG

Label:
Schramsberg
Founded 1862
Blanc De Blancs
Methode Champenoise
Brut
Vintage 2006
Produced and Bottled by Schramsberg Vineyards
Calistoga, California
100% North Coast Sparkling Wine
Alcohol: 12.9%
100% Chardonnay
Handcrafted
Cool climate North Coast Vineyards
Barrel fermentation and extended aging
Hugh Davies, Vintner

$25.99 US Dollars

If you have these two bottles in your local store, go out and buy them and give them a try. I want to hear what you have to say about each. Have someone label the glasses A and B and label the bottles A and B for a blind tasting. Do not look at which one you are trying. Try a blind tasting and see what you think. If you do not have these two bottles or cannot get them locally, just look for our next post and see what others have to say about the taste.


Tell me your thoughts, make them funny, keep them nice and educate me.
Bon Vin!
Veronica

100 Wine Blogs, 100 Days Blog 15 How to have your guests blend wines to make their favorites?

15. I would like to talk about wine parties and different ways to have fun hosting a party. In the last blog, we learned how to throw a great wine party. This article will talk about how to have your guests blend wines to make their favorites. The next two articles will be about how to identify wine aromas and how to host a wine tasting in your home. These are ways you can enjoy common interests without it becoming a boring ritual.

How to have your guests blend wines to make their favorites?

There are kits that you can purchase that are on the market such as “fusebox” from Crushpad. The kit will come with the wine for blending. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Cabernet Franc are included in the California wine kit. The kit will also come with a blending placemat, corkscrew, recipe cards, wine evaluation cards, pipettes and a graduated cylinder. There is a mystery wine that is included that has already been blended. Once you get good at blending wines and how the different variations of wine tastes together, you can decide with your guests what the mystery wine might be.

You do not need to use this wine kit if you want to purchase these items separately. You can decide on a region or area and purchase some wines you think would be best for blending. Keep in mind that you should purchase wines that are not already blended.

First, you will each set up your area on a table that can accommodate all of the participants so that you can comment and share your thoughts together. Each person will need these basics for any wine tasting: water and crackers or bread to cleanse your palate between wines, a spit cup, paper towels, blending placemat, a pen or pencil and five wine glasses. You will be evaluating each wine that you create.

You start by tasting each of the wines by themselves before blending to get a feel for what each one tastes like. You can then either use the recipe cards that come with the kit to make a wine or create your own blend. For instance, the 1997 Opus One from Napa, California is one of the recipe cards in my kit. It gives the blend that you can recreate with the wines that are provided. The evaluation cards let you rate the color, aroma, flavor, texture and overall feel for the wine. You can decide what blend you like best. You can compare your blend with other participants. This is fun, easy and can become a habit.

If you do come up with an incredible blend and you are feeling daring, you can actually contact Crushpad to create your wine. All of you can split the cost and end up with cases of your favorite blend.

At Crushpad, they let you actually go to their facilities and help in the creation of your wine. You can sort the grapes, help in the fermentation or even taste your creation throughout the process. It is a fun and exciting adventure!

Tell me your thoughts, make them funny, keep them nice and educate me.
Bon Vin!
Veronica

100 Wine Blogs, 100 Days Blog 14 How to Throw a Great Wine Party?

14. In the next four articles, I would like to talk about wine parties and different ways to have fun hosting a party. How to throw a great wine party? How to have your guests blend wines to make their favorites? How to identify wine aromas? How to host a wine tasting in your home? These are ways you can enjoy common interests without it becoming a boring ritual.

How to throw a great party?

Decide how many people you are going to invite. Do they all have an interest in wine? What knowledge do they have about wines? What type of party do you want to have? There are so many different choices when it comes to wine. You can have a wine party and pair it up with fruit, cheese, dessert, chocolate or even a full seven course meal.

When you decide what to pair your wine with, you will need to pick wines that match up and bring out the best in the wine and the food. You can also determine what you are serving by what time of day your party takes place. If it is late evening, you may want to pair it up with desserts or appetizers. If it is every evening you may want a full course menu. If it is in the afternoon, a brunch can always be fun or if in the morning a breakfast will do just fine. Many people think that they cannot have a wine party in the early morning. Get that out of your head. Early morning is the best time to taste wine. Your taste buds are alive and ready to take on some new blends of textures and flavors.

Where should you have your wine party?

You can decide to have your party in your home. You may want to rent out a club house or room in a restaurant for your party if it is larger than what your home can handle. You may want to have a smaller party in order to focus more on the wine and less on the party. One of my favorite ways to throw a party like this is something I call “house jumping”. Each of your friends will have a portion of a meal at their house. You can have a designated driver, and go from house to house having first the appetizer at one person’s home, the main meal at another, the dessert at another and split up the homes and the meals. You can focus at each home on one wine and one meal. This makes it fun for everyone to be able to showcase their wine and their meal and not have to worry about the entire menu. It also is fun to talk about in either a limo or van where you can all be transported safely to each other’s home.

So, that takes care of who, what, when, where and how to throw a great wine party. Next we will talk about how to have fun wine blending with your friends.

Tell me your thoughts, make them funny, keep them nice and educate me.
Bon Vin!
Veronica