Wine Sex, Beauty in the Bottle

These words spoken in the film A Good Year set the tone for the entire movie.
Wine is as much a character in this film as Russell Crowe. Yet what is most telling is the comment – wine is honest, it doesn’t tell a lie. It is what it is. Have you met any dishonest wines?

Based on Peter Mayle's’wonderful book of the same name, Ridley Scott did a beautiful production filmed about 10 minutes from his house in Provence. If you can't afford the air fare travel there via the DVD.

I love seeing wine and vineyards in film. Besides Sideways which made pinot noir the star and dampened merlot's popularity, most films simply use wine for toasting the noble gesture. When wines and vines are the star, that's entertainment , promotion, and something to share.

Visit the film’s official website with its virtual vineyard and you can make your own wine.... A lot of fun to watch the vines grow and for those just discovering the passion of the vine you can learn about winemaking in a delightful fashion, .

I'm still waiting for a new TV series to replace Falcon Crest. I've got some ideas if any film producers are interested.

Do you have a favorite wine film?

Well, dear wine lovers, its been a while since I last entered this blog. I had just completed the penultimate version of my wine book when my editor requested I do a little research on closure.

I thought I was finished. I had closure with the manuscript until she asked 'what about corks and screw caps, what's the current thought on stopping up the wine bottle?' Actually all I knew about was the complaint of cork taint.

Cork taint is definitely a problem, though a minor one. Cork costs are higher than the popular Stelvin screw caps or synthetic corques. So before I explored the fine cork sites, like APCOR (the Portuguese Cork Association) and the Cork Quality Council, I had concluded screw caps, though not as aesthetically pleasing, were better than natural cork closures.

Think again. What about sustainability? From what I understand, the cork is the only sustainable closure. The cork tree is not destroyed to give us fine corks. Its outer bark is harvested about every 9 years and the cork oak tree lives for about 200 years. Cork forests support lots of critters and are a haven for biodiversity. So concerned about the loss of cork forests, the Spanish government outlawed the use of alternate stoppers in its top wine growing areas.

As always, Jamie Goode's wine anorak site has some good information on this very controversial subject.

What are your thoughts on corks vs. screw caps? Do the screw caps add to or destroy the growing trend to sustainability?

There's been lots of news on resveratrol in red wine that influences our health. Hooray for the grape! Of course to reproduce the results in animals we'd need to drink an amount of wine that would kill us. The reported health potential includes delaying or preventing "Oldtimers," lowering our risks for heart disease and cancer, and it's said to even make women's memory better.

Incredible BUT and..... are the health benefits only due to the molecules in wine? Could it possibly be the social situations in which we share wine that contribute to our well-being?

My idea about wine's contribution to health is that the community aspect is a major component. To explain the difference between French and American health we might just consider the social situations around meals, drink, and relaxation.

To add to my learning, when do you drink wine, is it usually alone or with other people?

Happy new year and may this be a vintage year for all of us.

I know this is supposed to be a wine blog so that also means a blog for the senses.

And speaking of senses, I enjoyed the most sensual ice cream on New Year's Eve - Lavender ice cream from Mashti Malone. Even cold it offered the scent of lavendar before the creamy dessert touched my lips. One teaspoon satisfied me, it was so full-bodied.

They make very unique ice creams and sorbets - from roses, saffron, pomegranates - sold at Whole Foods and other gourmet and healthy food shops.

Now to see which wine complements this, though the ice cream itself was intoxicating. A delicious treat to eat.

The first chardonnay that offered me a taste to remember was this bejeweled beauty, one of Jess Jackson’s first chardonnays. This is a portrait of his 1983 Vintner’s Reserve, at two years. It showed a consistency and depth of microscopic design seen only in chardonnays that underwent malolactic fermentation. Everywhere I looked on the microscopic terrain, this pattern was evident.

A consistency in quality was also born out in the KJ chardonnays themselves. When traveling to teach in the backwaters of the US of A, I could usually find a KJ char on the menu to order. I knew it would be pleasurable to drink and I could afford it.

Jess Jackson’s first wine was released in 1983 – 1982 Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay. His intent was to make the best chardonnay in the United States and to popularize the idea of varietal wines. His 1983 Chardonnay won the first platinum award ever presented by the American Wine competition.

Take a look at this wine expression, what does it look like to you? A sea creature, a pile of crystals, snowflakes? A jewel, was the great Andre Tschelitcheff’s interpretation. Chardonnay is a more feminine wine (in mouth and microscopic design) when it undergoes malolactic fermentation. The KJ chardonnays undergo secondary malolactic fermentation, Grgich’s chardonnays do not. Is that reflected in their wine portraits?

Something to ruminate on with the next sip of wine – is it possible that the microscopic constellation of wine molecules offer telltale clues to its personality or character?

Cheers! BTW, all wine portraits on this blog and website are available as limited edition giclee reproductions.

Here's "Granny Grape" reporting on another outstanding bevy of beauties. Reuben Katz at CIA in St. Helena generously gave me wines that were being enjoyed at the 3rd Annual Robert Parker Wine Tasting Seminar (pinot noir and red burgundies). I tasted with nose, mouth and eyes and each one was more interesting than the next. One of the group's favorites was the Roar 2004 Pinot Noir Gary's Vineyard- Santa Lucia Highlands. Gaze on its splendor here and maybe you can imagine its taste while you're at it.

RP rated this wine 94 points and described it as full-bodied, fleshy, beautifully expansive, well-integrated and fragrant. Unfortunately we can't see fragrant under the microscope, its part of the angel's share into the air.

Stay tuned for other beauties from Burgundy and California Pinots. These high-scoring wines are now available as limited edition prints to decorate your wine cellar. Edition size only 30.

For those of you far from a vineyard you miss, not simply its beauty but its noise.

Noise?

Imagine many many steel barrels rattling down your street, its late at night and they keep on a'comin. What's that sound you wonder.

AHA! It's cold out and the grapes are still hanging. What's a vineyard manager to do - turn on the fans, which does not make fans of the neighbors. It's loud.

When the harvest goes late, like this year, the evenings are particularly chilly here above the Russian River. Grapes must be watched over, kept warm by moving the chill moist air off of the plants, unless of course you want to make ice wine. It's a reminder of the demands these plants make for their survival, we make for their survival.

So next time you enjoy a glass of wine, just think of all the stress the grapes and vine endured for your moments of pleasure. Here's toasting the divine vine.

Salud!

Yesterday I enjoyed a wonderfully fun educational lunch with the "Swami of Umami" Tim Hanni.

Tim served up a variety of foods (steak, shrimp, asparagus, spaghetti squash) with and without magic seasonings. And I got first hand how we can basically drink any wine with any food, provided we know the remedies. A wine too tannic is softened if you add salt or a squeeze of lemon on the food. And we all know what happens if we have something sweet before sipping a dry wine - yuck, the wine becomes sharp and biting. Tim explains it this way - if you eat something sweet it diminishes any softness from coming out from the wine. The remedy, the salty sour trick.

The Robert Mondavi Winery also has these culinary tricks written up.

This sure makes me happy to be able to enjoy red wine with the whitest of foods, a no-no in the past.

And one last bit of taste education here - what is umami? Umami is the 5th taste of savory and comes from amino acids, especially glutamate, as seen here in MSG, also in nucleotides. The foods containing these constituents are meats, cheeses, soy sauce, mushrooms, anchovies, lots more.

Isn't it great to discover how to enjoy any wine with any food?

The vineyards call to me this time of year and this afternoon I HAD to go check to see how they are doing. WOW! We've heard about slow food, man, the grapes are dawdling this year. I was up on Westside Rd. in Healdsburg tasting some merlot grapes - SOUR! This is a hotter area of the Russian River so I expected them to be 'cookin' - I'd guess they have another few weeks and they're earlier ripening reds than the rest.

This has been a most peculiar year weatherwise - is this evidence of global warming that we try so hard to ignore?

Yet it is so beautiful! I am ever grateful to be living up here to witness Nature's splendor.

Happy Harvest!

Celebrate this harvest by sending your friends an original wine postcard. The inner beauty and life of wine is captured through a microscope as are most of the wine portraits on this site. The set includes a cab (Ridge Monte Bello), chardonnay (Grgich), and merlot (Sterling).

PURCHASE a postcard series of 3 wine styles. Which expresses merlot best?

If you're really into the expression of taste, check out the 5 tastes postcards.

How do you remember a wine? How do you describe your tasting experience? This wine is a Chateau Lafite Rothschild.

I am intrigued with the words people use to convey their impressions of a wine, and their memory. One expert talks about what their nose knows while another speaks to mouth sensations. I have limited vocabulary to talk about wine other than textural. That's probably why I continue to take pictures through the microscope. The images serve as a symbolic vocabulary that may someday be useful to all of us to remember wine.

It always surprises me how wine expresses itself in pictures and taste. I enjoy it without words and still would like a larger lexicon, any suggestions how to create wine language?

Some wine 'impressionistic art' on my website SondraBarrett.com Drink in the beauty.

My latest 'wine gig' was to photograph two special chardonnays from Grgich Hills Cellars including their very first, the 1977 chardonnay. Naturally I taste everything.

Though the 1977 didn't have the vibrancy of younger wines, nor did it have any nose left, it still held its chardonnay structure intact. You knew you were sipping a chardonnay.

What a delightful surprise to see its exquisite inner views.

This was the oldest chardonnay I've ever tasted (or photographed). Would you expect California chardonnays to last 30 years, what about white Burgundies? What of the chardonnay character lasts?

Biodynamic wine is a controversial yet ever-growing approach to viticulture. Top winemakers are not only experimenting with these labor-intensive practices, more and more are embracing them 100%. Biodynamic, at its most essential, is SUSTAINABLE VITICULTURE. Pioneering biodynamics in California are Benziger, Grgich, Sinskey, Bonnie Doon, Quintessa, a slew in Mendocino - Jeriko, Pattiano, the whole Fetzer family. You can see these are respected producers of fine wines. Of course, in France and Germany another huge round of excellent wines are made biodynamically. Nicolas Joly, pioneer of modern BD viticulture of the Coulee de Serrant, produces highly esteemed wines. Read his "Wine from Sky to Earth" if you want to learn more.

I will explore Biodynamics in this blog and welcome feedback from any of you who have explored these and organic wines.



This is an image of GRGICH HILLS' first 100% biodynamic cabernet - a barrel sample 3 months old. PRESS the lovely image to learn more about BD viticulture which is ORGANIC PLUS sacred cosmic forces.

Well I was able to get a small sample of the 2002 BV Georges de Latour -

Just imagine a grown woman going around with tiny test tubes....Got Wine?

Emmy wines. THE EMMYS

This 2002 BV will be opened at the Governor's Ball for the Emmy's. Of course, my compadre A. Zabayoni thought this wine should be looked at.....

And what did I see? Some of the same slender structures as in older BV GLT... what does that mean? Who knows except - none of those structures were in the delicious 2002 Sterling Coastal Coast Merlot.

I don't know how delicious the 2002 BV was since I only got a 'thimble full' - the amount needed to photograph. .

How does this help you learn about or enjoy wine? It gives a picture for an experience. A picture is worth a thousand words.

When I first started drinking wine I never understood the descriptions on the label - briary, leather, tar, bold, seductive..... When the first winemaker I worked with, Theo Rosenbrand, said a portrait looked like his wine tasted, the idea blinked on - maybe the images would help me as visual symbols of my experience even if I couldn't name it. I'm better now but not much....

Only through grape's partnership with yeast, does the alchemical process called fermentation begin.

Yeast loves sugar in the sweet grape juice, chews it up and converts it into carbon dioxide and spirited alcohol. When alcohol levels reach about 15%, the yeast, 'too drunk' to work anymore, stop the process.

In wine's creation story, what is evident, yeast adds something essential to the mix of juice, acids, tannins and pigments. They not only transform the sugar into new mood-altering molecules, they bring more 'light' into the microscopic display.

This image of fermenting chardonnay reveals the tiny Montrachet yeast along with larger forms which are likely tartrates, the acid unique to the grape.

The hieroglyphics in the center are from an ancient wine jar seal, the earliest version of a wine label.

You could begin to see the wine designs uncovered with the microscope as glyphs or symbols of style. Or you might begin to think these are simply pretty pictures or that the person who took them had a wee bit more to drink than you have.

When we think of personal transformation it usually means a major spiritual change, so too with the grape.

Wines often seem like characters so let me introduce you to "Sir Blanc."

"Sir Blanc" represents a sleek, lively and crisp sauvignon blanc and may even be dancing on its toes. This particular sauvignon blanc from Sterling Vineyards was a favorite of winemaker Theo Rosenbrand. Last week I tasted another Sterling sauvignon blanc, the 2004 Central Coast and it was not only light and stealth, its fruity flavor and floral fragrance delighted me and made me want to dance. Not easy these days with a cast on my right foot.

I prefer red wines but the character of a cool sauvignon blanc on a hot evening is cause for celebrating all the complexities that wine offers us.

Have you ever noticed that we are more likely to drink wine with friends, and maybe a beer when we're alone?

Well, it could be that wine's contribution to our heart health is because we share wine with friends... In the new medicine of bodymind health scientists are discovering the common sense of people everywhere, that being with supportive people, sharing some of life gives us a merry heart, and perhaps helps keep the cholesterol down.

Next time you toast, toasting friendship and the grape, Salud!