Chateau Ste. Michelle Syrah

Just the other day, I picked up a bottle of the 2005 Chateau Ste. Michelle Syrah. They're Washington State's oldest winery, and they produce some outstanding wines at tremendous value prices. I've recently enjoyed their Cabernet, and their Riesling as well. Chateau Ste. Michelle is also a big supporter of the Susan Komen Race for the Cure, donating $1 for every bottle sold during an October promotion at Joe Canal's in Lawrenceville.

The Syrah had a nose of lush, ripe fruit, with touches of sweet plum and cherry. There was an enjoyable burst of jamminess, and the fruit stayed on for the finish. With a retail price of around $11, the wine was a very nice choice. It would be a great choice for a party wine, because it should please both Cab drinkers and someone who is relatively new to wine.

In addition to their great wines, the Chateau Ste. Michelle web site has a great feature they call My Cellar. It's a password-protected space where you can store information about any wine you've tasted. It's a great way to keep track (especially via mobile device) of wines you've enjoyed while out somewhere, without worrying about whether there's enough light to take a cell phone picture. Check My Cellar out at http://mycellar.ste-michelle.com/my_cellar_login.php

Cork or Screw Top?

I recently saw an industry statistic that indicated that up to 7% of all bottled wines are lost annually due to problems associated with the use of cork. That's a whole lotta wine. During his visit to the Joe Canal's in Lawrenceville, winemaker Sean Larkin told us about potential problems with screw-tops, which are often the result of mis-matched parts. But there are lots of outstanding wines that are bottled with screw-tops, so what's a wine lover to do?

Number 61 on the Wine Spectator Top 100 wines of 2009 is a 90-point Italian red blend, Monte Antico, and it's in a screw-top. People are very interested in the wine, especially when Joe Canal's has it on sale for less than $9.00, but some are resistant when they see the screw-top.

One of my favorite wines (The Lucky Country Shiraz) is bottled with a screw-top. And Australia is a leader in the use of screw-tops, which are good economically and environmentally. Yesterday, a customer came in for a particular bottle of Two Hands wine, which was priced around $80, and it was a screw-top. So I struck up a conversation with him about the whole issue, and about the bottle of Monte Antico. He knew he was buying a great bottle of Two Hands wine, and he was totally unfazed by the screw-top. He added three bottles of that Monte Antico to his one bottle of Two Hands, based on the Wine Spectator ratings.

The Lucky Country Shiraz

The Lucky Country Shiraz is a refined and sophisticated wine, in vivid contrast to last week’s Boxhead (Boxhead Shiraz was perfectly enjoyable, but in a different way). Although equally young (both are 2008 vintage), The Lucky Country Shiraz has the feel of a mature, fully evolved wine. Equally easy to drink and a pleasure to savor, the Shiraz finishes very smoothly. This is a second label effort from Two Hands Wines, and the anticipated quality was delivered.

This Shiraz carries an opaque black purple color. You’ll get aromas of blackberry, licorice, plum and prune. The tannins are fine-grained and very smooth, leaving an aftertaste of plum, spice and pepper. The Lucky Country Shiraz is ready to drink today –and you’ll be glad you did- or it can be cellared for 2-3 years.

Boxhead Shiraz 2008

It turned out that clients of mine from the social event video world are the owners of Vine Street Imports, a wine importer. Naturally, I had to try one, so I picked up a bottle of their 2008 Boxhead Shiraz.

This is from the Barossa region of Australia, and is a very fruit-forward wine. The fruit practically leaps to the nose, and the wine is a classic tooth-stainer. There is a bit of spice in this young, full-bodied wine, and the finish was very smooth and tasty.

I think this would be an outstanding wine for tailgating, and it would go really well with burgers or ribs. It would also be a nice fire-side wine.

A 2700-Year Old Beer?

Earlier this year, I read about some of the interesting projects under development at Dogfish Head Brewery. One that caught my attention was an ale being created from a 2700-year old “recipe” that was decoded from pottery discovered in a tomb in central Turkey.

The story goes that University of Pennsylvania archeologists discovered what could have been the tomb of the real King Midas. Taking the Iron Age drinking set back to Penn Museum, a molecular archeologist analyzed the reside, providing the formula that became Dogfish head’s Midas Touch ale. I thought that whole process was fascinating.

So the ale includes barley, honey, white Muscat grapes, and saffron. To drink it quickly is to taste a honey beer. To savor it is to find the subtle flavors and the particular soft taste from the saffron. The scent is also very soft, pretty far removed from the hoppy beer that I often prefer.

Dogfish Head also has an ale developed from a 9000-year old recipe. I’ll get to that one of these days.

On the NJ Governor's Race

A worker for one of the NJ gubernatorial campaigns stopped at our door this morning. He had some literature, and wanted to share the good news about his preferred candidate with me. But he asked for “Yadu”, who was the previous resident. When I explained that basic fact, his comment was that I didn’t look like a Yadu.

I’m conflicted. Was that simply an insensitive comment, or was it racist?

And he was with the Corzine campaign.

Flying Winemaker Zinfandel

I've been drinking some interesting wines lately. Among the best, with a modest price tag, have been from Cameron Hughes. After trying the Meritage Lot 126, Chardonnay, and Tempranillo, I haven't tasted a bad one yet. Last night, I opened the Flying Winemaker Zinfandel, and that was very tasty.

It was an appropriately dark purple wine, with a very light nose. The taste, however, burst through with cherries, berries, and jam. I tried pasting the official notes from the CH web site, but that didn't work. Instead, here's the link to their web site: http://www.chwine.com/flyingwinemaker/zinfandel/
But if you're looking for a full-bodied Zinfandel, get a bottle of this right now.

One Wedding and a Funeral

Life cycle events are always fascinating. I’ll start with the happy event.

One of my occasional camera operators got married last Saturday. I was asked to attend the rehearsal, although I’m not really sure why. After all these years, it wasn’t likely that the ceremony would have even one element that I hadn’t seen before.

The church was where Oak Lane and Mt. Airy overlapped, which was something of a treat for me. My mother’s parents lived in Oak Lane for most of their lives, and my father’s parents lived in Mt. Airy for many years. My family lived in Oak Lane when I was very young, and I have many memories of that area. Driving past our former homes was an interesting trip down memory lane, especially since I hadn’t been past our home on North 17th Street in a very long time.

Rehearsal was interesting, what with the cherry-picker inside the sanctuary. The roof had a leak directly above where the bride and groom would be standing, and the cherry-picker was there for the repairs. Ok, so that was something I hadn’t seen before.

I didn’t know exactly what was happening, as all of the participants started gathering in a circle. About the same moment that I realized that everyone was going to pray together, I was “invited” to participate. “You too, sweepea” was the command of the woman in charge. And who was I to argue? We all joined hands and prayed.

It must have worked, because the rain did not materialize on their wedding day, and the roof didn’t leak on them. Kimberly and Shawn had a great and happy day together. Their honeymoon was in Cancun, and they had stocked up on flu-fighting goods.

On Friday, the day between the rehearsal and the wedding, I got an email with a very disturbing subject line. A fraternity brother had passed away suddenly, and the email was the funeral information.

“Passed away suddenly” is, of course, a euphemism. There was a widow with two young sons, one thisclose to his Bar Mitzvah. The rabbi called it a tragedy, and, at least for the survivors, that’s pretty accurate. I certainly know about the kind of madness that leads to such an end, but that doesn’t make it any better.

On Monday, I took the ride to the funeral with three other Brothers, each of whom I’ve know for more than 30 years. We met up with many others at the funeral, some of whom I’ve also known for more than 30 years. I looked around at these guys, my good friends, and realized that we have grown old together.

So there’s no big philosophical conclusion here. This was a glimpse into my world from the last weekend. That will lead into this weekend, where I’m covering a second-generation event. I covered the parent’s wedding, and now it’s their daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.

The Wedding Video Business Needs More Challenges

Actually, the newest challenges have the potential to impact photographers, and other wedding professionals as well. Like so many interesting concepts, the business models I’ll discuss here started on the West Coast.

At least one video professional teamed up with roughly a dozen other wedding vendors to sponsor a DIY wedding video seminar. Their mission was to instruct engaged couples, and their friends, on how to shoot and edit their own wedding video. An afternoon of instruction would be followed by a “Meet the Professionals” segment, where the other vendors would be available.

While I know the person who coordinated this program, we have not yet discussed it, so I don’t know the motivation. According to the web site, the scheduled workshop was cancelled.

Places like Home Depot offer free classes because they know that they’ll sell enough product to justify the expense. Here, advance registration for the wedding video workshop was $49, and it was $69 at the door. Granted, that price did include a coffee break and a Wine and Hors d’Ouevres Reception. Regardless of whether the vendor partners made any financial contribution, this was going to be an expensive production. We haven’t seen something like this on the East Coast yet, but it looks like we could.

The other new concept impacts photography, along with video. There is a company offering to rent out digital still cameras, and those cameras are also capable of capturing video and audio. This is being touted as an environmentally-friendly improvement on the disposable cameras that have been so prevalent at weddings.

You can order packages of 10, 20, or even 30 of these digital cameras. They’re shipped to you just before the wedding, along with extra “eco-friendly” batteries. The company then hosts the photos and/or video on their web site, where anyone can access the files, and order copies. The claim is that each camera can hold more than 450 photos, or more than 15 minutes of audio and video. The images are available on the website for a month (included in the basic price), or for a year, for an additional fee of about $45. The photo and video files are then available for download-for free.

The wedding business has always been very competitive. With these two developments, I think that competitiveness ramped up a bit more.

You Can’t Find Everyone On Facebook

Every now and then, I look for a couple of college fraternity brothers via the Internet. As so often happens, we’d fallen out of touch years ago, when we all went our separate ways. And for as easy as Facebook makes it to connect with old friends, it’s still not perfect.

My first target was Randy Weber, who was one of my best friends at the TEP house. We were last in touch about twenty years ago. I knew that he’d moved to the Erie, PA area, and that he’d started a chimneysweep business back then, but that was about it. So despite my sporadic efforts, I could not track him down. He did not have any visibility on the ‘net.

Around Christmas, the obvious solution finally smacked me in the head. Randy was from a small town in northwest PA. I figured that if I did a white pages search for his home town, I’d find someone he was related to, and I’d be able to connect that way.

The white pages search gave me 5 people with the same last name. I’d stayed at his home back when we were in school, and one of the street names sounded vaguely familiar, so I called. And the person who answered the phone was Randy’s mother. Trusting soul, she gave me Randy’s home phone number in Lake City, PA.

I called him right away, and his wife answered the phone. Randy couldn’t talk just then, she explained, because he was out skinning a deer. That flashed me back to Randy and his roommate trying to tan a deer hide in their bathroom. Didn’t work so well.

It took a couple of weeks of phone tag, but we finally connected. And he did confirm that he rarely uses email, since he does not have a desk job. Now we’re just going to have to find an excuse to meet up back in State College.