Hidden Valley Enoteca, Blue-Merle Winery to Host Wine Tasting To Kick-Off AMGEN Tour of California Bike Race May 11 in Escondido

The Hidden Valley Enoteca and Blue-Merle Winery will host a wine tasting in Escondido, CA on the eve of the AMGEN Tour of California bicycle race. The race is viewed as a tune-up event for riders who will compete in the Tour de France. The Enoteca is a shared tasting room and culinary campus of five local San Diego wineries and to celebrate the start of The Tour the Enoteca will host wine tasting with food trucks and a band throughout the afternoon and early evening of Saturday, May 11th.

Hundreds of guests are expected according to Rosie Barnett, Enoteca's tasting room manager. "This is going to be a bid deal," she said.  The Enoteca address is: 26312 Mesa Rock Road, Escondido, CA 92026.

For AMGEN Tour of California visitors looking for a wine tasting experience of local San Diego wineries before, during and after the race, the Enoteca allows guests to taste wines from five different wineries.  "With so many different wines and winemaking styles, there's bound to be a wine for everyone," said Ms. Barnett.  There is a $10 tasting fee per person, which includes 6 tastes of wine, or $15 to try 12 different wines. There is no charge for the music and visitors on May 11th will be able to purchase food from food trucks at the facility, and to enjoy a picnic lunch on the Enoteca grounds. Bottles of one's favorite wine may also be purchased.

"This is a great opportunity for the City of Escondido and Escondido's wineries to showcase their offerings," said Craig Justice, proprietor of Blue-Merle Winery, one of the founding wineries of the Enoteca, which just opened its doors last September. "San Diego County is a fantastic place to grow wine," Justice said, "With its combination of bright sunshine and cool ocean breezes. The area is also a cyclist's paradise."

For more information about the Tour of California:

Here's the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_of_California
Here's AMGEN's official Tour of California website: http://www.amgentourofcalifornia.com/#2
Here's AMGEN's Twitter account for the Tour: http://www.twitter.com/amgenTourofcali @AmgenTourofCali

For more information about the Blue-Merle Winery:

http://www.bluemerewinery.com
http://www.facebook.com/bluemerlewinery
http://www.twitter.com/bluemerlewinery or @bluemerlewinery

For more information about the Hidden Valley Enoteca and The Escondido Wine & Culinary Campus please visit: http://www.hiddenvalleyenoteca.com/

A Superpower Palate For Grapes

I've never had the experience of tasting "chocolate" in wine, which is to say the society of grands chevaliers du vin from Burgundy are not aggressively recruiting me to join their group, quel domage. However, my superpower palate for tasting grapes may qualify me for the next edition of X-Men (in which I prevent the "terrioristas" from injecting salt into Napa Valley's water table and save the grapes). Our beloved instructor and mentor Lum Eisenman once told us in class that with about 20 or so years of experience we would be able to walk among rows of vines and determine by tasting individual grapes if the vineyard was ready for harvest or not. (Been there, done that, most notably during a pick three years ago when I was sampling Brunello berries from the vine and was astonished that the brix were low, which was confirmed once we took measurements back in the lab). Two years ago when we purchased grapes from Val de Guadeloupe, Mexico, when I munched on some grapes my first reaction was, "These are salty."  Our mentor Pete Anderson remarked, "Some people are able to taste the brine, others aren't.  You've got that sense". Not only could I taste the salt in the grapes, I can taste it in finished wine from those grapes (even when professional winemakers using those same grapes claim they were able to cold soak the salt out of them -- not so, in my opinion).

Under the full harvest moon this evening Bluey and I picked a random sample of 50 Aglianico grapes, squeezed them in a baggie and poured the juice into a shot glass and sipped. Not quite ready for picking, I guessed, and the refractometer confirmed that with a reading of 23 brix (a measure of sugar).  We're shooting for higher. But I could feel the acid on the tongue and tickling my glands and thought that it's just a little high, but still a nice acid and will make for a good puckery wine.

My benchmark for acid in wine is the Cabernet produced by Chateau Montelena.  Mind you I don't buy this wine, but I enjoy winning it in bets from Celestial Sandra and Coyote Karen, and this wine is the best I've had in recent memory which, despite being 10+ years in age is still has robust fruit, and, to borrow a phrase from wine connoisseur Bill Clinton, "It's the acid, stupid!"

I went into the winery and sampled the Tempranillo now in its third day of cold soak. The fruit is delicious, but it lacked the puckeriness of that Aglianico juice I had tasted a few minutes before.  The Tempranillo checked in at 25+ brix with a high pH just below 4 and an acid level below .45 .  I was considering blending some high acid wine that we held back from the year before, but at the end of the day decided to do a modest addition of tartaric acid to raise the acidity to approximately .60  .  I added the acid, stirred, then tasted. You didn't need to be an X-Men to notice the difference, and improvement, immediately.

Taste varies widely from person to person, and there are no objective standards. What I like, you may not, and vice versa. What has been your experience tasting grapes (or wine) and what are you able to detect?

Vineyard Scents For Men Only

Kelly and Jones is a scentologist working in New York City who brings wine fragrances to the bottle for women. We have often noted that the Petit Verdot wine we produce from our friend's vineyard in Bonsall, CA is so fragrant that some women have said they are tempted to splash it on their neck rather than rinse their pallet. Mademoiselle Kelly has distilled the essence of such aromas into perfumes, colognes and wearable fragrances that are welcomed by winemakers in the tasting room. I have an idea for her, inspired by the vineyard. Look what happens when I add water to the eau de yellow jacket scent -- the males appear instantly. I suspect Mademoiselle Kelly is working on such a fragrance for men. One splash and the women swarm. My recommendation for Kelly & Jones stock: STRONG BUY.

A Dog's Nose For Sniffing Wine

I like to think I've taught Bluey (the Australian Shepherd who runs this place) something about wine tasting while he's taught me a few things about wine & cork sniffing. I'm not exactly sure how many thousands-of-times more powerful a dog's nose is to ours, but I've learned to trust Bluey's judgement of wines by the number of times he smacks his lips, the higher number of licks correlating to better wines.

I have never tasted "chocolate" nor "espresso" in wine (although I do not deny their existence), and I'm the first to admit that my palette is unsophisticated. I know what I like and that's good enough for me. As a winemaker, my aim is to make wines that I (and Bluey) like. And if you like our wines, follow-me. I know I liked those bottles of 10-year old Chateau Montelena Cabernet I won in bets from Coyote Karen and Celestial Sandra last year, and I know that I liked that Chateau Brion I tasted in 1976 at a tender young age. Although you're unlikely to find me on a wine judging panel with Robert Whitley (though we're both from San Diego), I have developed an uncanny ability to identify "salt" in wine (this is handy when evaluating grapes from Guadeloupe Valley) and to identify "oxidized" wine, which some of you may refer to as "corked."

How is it that Mr. Unsophisticated Palette can identify bad wine faster than a Bloodhound can sniff out beef jerky at JFK customs? Because I've made my fair share of bad batches (let's just call those learning experiences) and I know what a good wine gone bad tastes like. Furthermore, when we moved inland to the country and experienced our first heatwave and I left a 5-gallon carboy in the garage of our first batch of 2004 Syrah, our neighbor, a member of the Royal Order of Wine Tasters of Burgundy, was diplomatic enough to observe, " Reminds me of medicino." I quickly became all too familiar with what high heat and insufficient sulfites can do to good wine. Another formative moment in the development of my nose was when Joe the Wino gave me a case of 1970 Chateau Lafitte for Christmas one year with the level of wine below the neck. When poured it revealed a light, brownish, color -- that wine and its aroma defines oxidized in my mind. (By the way, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of that wine, thinking back to the year 1970 when it was harvested and what on earth I was doing way back then, but the taste was well past its prime.)

So on a visit to New York City last weekend I sat down at a counter inside Eataly, a new, fashionable Italian all-in-one cafe, delicatessen & restaurant establishment that's great fun, and noticed Italian Nebbiolos on the menu. They were pricey, but in the mood to splurge and as a maker of Nebbiolo wines for Bishops, company CEOs and women who trade hugs for wine, I ordered a glass for $25 (that's $25 a glass, not for 750 ml). The waiter brought a bottle to the table and poured a taste that resembled the off-color rust of that 1970 Chateau Lafitte wine more than the purple majesty of Blue-Merle's Nebbiolo and a taste quickly confirmed my suspicion. "That's oxidized," I told the waiter, who took the bottle to the Maitre d' for evaluation. The Eataly's service was fantastic and the staff fetched a new bottle that was better and later as I was eating the waiter came back and told me yes, the wine was corked (what about those people who had spent $75 on the wine before me?) and then the Maitre d' came by and told me he had tasted it too and yes, it was off. What did they expect? Of course the wine was no good -- I have too much experience making no good wine. When Mario the proprietor reads this and invites me back, I propose carrying a 2006 Blue-Merle Nebbiolo with grapes grown by Camillo in Guadeloupe Valley (Cetto Winery) and let's have a shoot out of the Blue-Merle vs. Eatly's $50/glass of old world Nebbiolo. If I loose, I'll pay $50 for his glass. If we win, Mario should pay us $250 for our 5-glass bottle plus Bluey's airfare.

We'll need a neutral judge for this shoot-out and I have the perfect person in mind: Mademoiselle Salud Scents, the world famous scentologist who has created a line of fragrances that combine the building blocks of wine essences: fruit, flower, citrus, pepper, et al. I wonder if the Scent Sommelier could fashion for me an aroma that evokes that elusive wine delight, chocolate?