I have no sense of smell. People are often shocked to hear that given what a foodie I am but that is not where I have trouble it's with wine, I think. Or maybe I just don't like wine.
To me it all tastes the same-usually sour and often bitter. However I read about it so that I am informed in the basics and periodically I go to wine tastings. I went to a delightful wine bar last night and had a lot of fun there and tonight I went to a kosher wine tasting, Covenant from the Napa Valley and it was quite fascinating.
Last night an old friend and I went to SD26 which I have mentioned quite happily before but this time I got to try the wine bar which I have been dying to do since it opened. There is a refrigerated shelf holding each wine hermetically sealed with no air and a spigot. You put a credit card like card into the slot and then your glass under the spout, push either the 1, 3, or 5 once button and your wine comes softly splashing out. I am sorry to say I didn't write down the wines we chose but there was a syrah I enjoyed very much-it soft and flavorful. We had two appetizers the raviolo with truffle and a raw egg inside that gets poached as the ravioli cooks and divine mozzarella with roasted squash and fried artichoke hearts. What a marvelous way to winterize a caprese salad! We really enjoyed ourselves immensely!
Tonight, I went to a kosher wine tasting from a vintner who started, Covenant, his latest project in 2003-he set out to make the best kosher wine in 5000 years. He buys grapes from important vineyards around the Napa and Russian River valley then rents space from a winery to do his aging and wine making. As he pointed out there is nothing un-kosher about grapes but it's the various process' that make a wine kosher, again, as he pointed out out-all wine is kosher it's a matter of keeping it that way or preventing it from becoming un-kosher. All fascinating! Right now he has a chardonnay (called Covenent Lavan, which means white in Hebrew) and two versions of a cabernet sauvignon the first was called red C carrying a black label with a large sweeping red letter “c on it-very clever. The second of the red wines was finer as it had none of the tannins of the skins pressed into it. The next wine he is going to bottle is a blend of grapes made 1/2 from the mountaintop vineyards and half from the valley floor vineyards but both owned by Rudd wines. It sounds fascinating as a concept and I would love to taste it but all 100 cases have been spoken for and it will be over $100 a bottle and totally wasted on me. He was a very interesting man and spoke with all of his passion-which makes it exciting to listen to. He even tried to help me smell the lemons in the chardonnay that everyone else (said so anyway) smelled but to no avail. All I could tell him was that I could smell a difference between the white and the red-he seemed satisfied with that and so was I. I think I will stick to the cocktails I so love.
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