Year-end 2009 marked the first full year of this site, which was started way back in June 2008.   At the risk of sounding too self-important and cliché, I wanted to post a quick 2009 year-end wrap up for posterity.

I started this site as a way to bring order to my wine notes and chronicle some of my travels that involve wine.  Since this site is still an informal, random collection of my wine experiences, I’m not sure if I’ve met my initial charge – but I’ve totally enjoyed the learning experience of formalizing some of my wine thoughts on this blog, and I’ve met some great people to boot.

In 2009, a couple of my quasi-accomplishments:

• I wrote 115 posts
• Enjoyed wine on 5 continents
• Flew 152,000 miles.
• Spent 149 nights in Marriotts (and a few more at other hotel chains)
• Took a long awaited trip to Oregon’s Willamette Valley
• Attended the Wine Bloggers Conference in Santa Rosa, CA
• Took a wine tasting weekend in Virginia wine country with friends and follow wine bloggers, Dezel Quillen of MyVineSpot, and John Witherspoon of AnythingWine.
• Met a lot of great wine friends through this site

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to meet my primary 2009 wine related goal:

Redesign and move this site to WordPress and turn DrinkWhatYouLike in to an actual blog that resembles a real website vice something that a bored wino fobbed together.

Aside from attending the European Wine Bloggers Conference, my number one 2010 wine related goal is to finally professionalize this site (guess that would include devoting more than an hour a week to this site).  I realize the formatting, layout, and consistent grammatical and spelling errors detract from the actual content and cheapen the site (of course I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing to keep expectations low…. ).  I will work on improving this site as I take my wine education to the next level in 2010.

Although I’m not able to devote enough time to this blog to capture all of my tasting notes and wine experiences, I have a couple of notable favorites this year that I’d like to recap:

Favorite Wine Trip of 2009: My favorite wine related trip of 2009 was to Australia where I met some incredible wine makers, toured beautiful vineyards and countryside, and was turned on to Australian Pinot Noir.   The only downside to this trip was the fact that my wife wasn’t able to join me.  I’ll be returning Down Unda in May/June, and hope to take wifey along with me.

A close second was my trip to the Willamette Valley – FINALLY!  Having my wife with me made this trip perfect.  I plan to return to the Willamette Valley in 2010 for a week or two.  I am planning my trip during the Fall, and hopefully can convince a winery to let me work (volunteer) with them for a week during harvest.

By rough estimate, I tasted 500+ wines in 2009.  This includes winery visits, wine festivals, trade tastings and wine consumed during meals.  Of all the wines I tasted, a few stood out for me (there are of course too many other great ones to list here).

Favorite White of 2009:

By far, my favorite white wine of 2009 was the 2007 Matthiasson White.  During a trip to Napa in January, my wife and I had the pleasure of having lunch at the home of Matthiasson founders, Jill Klein and Steve Matthiasson, where I was first introduced to their amazing wines (read post here).  Given the amount of very well deserved national recognition and big time press Matthiasson wines are receiving, I suspect these wines may be much harder to find in 2010.

Favorite Red(s) of 2009:

One of my favorite reds of the year was the Patricia Green 2005 Anniversary Pinot Noir.  We opened this bottle in February as part of ‘Open the Bottle Night.’

One indicator that I will never be a professional wine critic is my situational bias – the fact that my enjoyment level of any given wine goes up exponentially if I happen to be consuming that wine during a Steelers victory, or, if my wife and I happen to be enjoying the wine together on a quiet night at home (I travel an insane amount so this is a rare occasion).   One of my favorite wines while enjoying a Steelers victory (AFC Championship Game) back in January was the Le Telquel Gamay produced my ultra minimalist Theirry Puzelat.  This wine tasted much better as the Steelers sealed their victory.

On wine blogging in 2009: I realize it’s passé to blog about wine blogging, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a few of my favorite wine blogs that I read on an almost daily basis.  I currently follow about 100 wine blogs with Google Reader, but these are just a few of my favorites:

• Good Grape written by Jeff Lefevere.   In this time of short attention spans and Twitter-dominated communication, Jeff’s long-format Op-Ed style is refreshing.   Thankfully the wine blogosphere has people with Jeff’s writing talent and passion for the subject of wine.  If you don’t read Good Grape, you should.  It is, by far, one of the very best wine related sites ‘out there.’
• Bigger Than Your Head written by Fredric Koeppel.  Much like Good Grape, Bigger Than Your Head is exceptionally well written with a strong focus on wine reviews.  Fredric is a professional wine writer by trade and that clearly shows at BTYH.  He is on my list of wine people to meet.  If I’m ever in Memphis I plan to look him up in the hopes of shaking him down for some cheese toast.  Not only is BTYH well written with valuable/usable advice and tasting notes, it has a clean layout that I appreciate.
• Virginia Wine Time written by Warren Richard and Paul Armstrong.  As the name suggests, their blog is solely focused on the growing Virginia wine industry.  Virginia Wine Time, in my opinion, is the best single-state-focused wine blog in the blogosphere.  The word ‘best’ defined as actually having useful information.  I have been a long time reader of VWT and have utilized the site several times when making decisions on wineries to visit during trips out to Virginia wine country.  Paul and Warren are also on my list of wines peeps to meet in 2010.
• HoseMaster of Wine written by some guy named Ron Washam.   This guy is a hoot – he’s crass, rude, funny, opinionated, uses swear words in his posts, and posts the occasional nude female images – but I like it.  I really enjoy good satire, and this is good (at times) satire.  Ron too, is on my list of wine people to meet in 2010.
• Wino sapien written by Edward, a 40 something, father, husband, doctor based in Perth, Australia.  I found Wino sapien early in 2009, and read it religiously.  Edward’s site was a huge resource for me leading up to my trip to Australia.  From his writing, Edward appears to be a cerebral dude, and I like smart people, and like reading their writing.  Hat tip to Edward for turning me on to a couple of good books during the year as well.

I certainly left out a lot of other great wine blogs, but wanted to give a few shout outs.

Happy New Year! Thanks for reading! Here’s to a great 2010…

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A common trend with me seems to be tardiness – more specifically tardiness of posting, so another late one here.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I invited a small group of friends over to our house for a ‘pork and pinot’ dinner.  The charge – bring one pork dish along with a bottle or two of pinot.  The best part of these get-togethers, aside from drinking way too much and falling asleep in a window box, is the food.  Several of our friends are superb cooks, with an excellent taste in wine to boot.

For the blind tasting we included eight bottles of Pinot Noir ranging in price from $9.99 to $55.   Each of the wines were bagged, shuffled, and numbered to ensure complete blindness.  Wines were scored on a 10-point scale (1 being undrinkable, 10 being wine utopia).  After the tasting, each taster’s wine scores were added up, and the wines were ranked based on overall score.

Before...

The eight Pinot Noirs included in the blind tasting:

• Bogle, 2007, Russian River Valley, CA
• Belle Vallee 2006 Reserve, Willamette Valley, OR
• Adelsheim Elizabeth Reserve, 2007, Willamette Valley, OR
• Scotchman’s Hill, 2007, Geelong, Australia
• Caretaker, 2008, Arroyo Grande Valley, Central Coast, CA
• DePonte Cellars, 2007, Dundee Hills, Dayton, OR
• Erath, 2007, Oregon
• Martin Ray, 2007, Santa Barbara County, CA

When the final results were tabulated, the wines finished as follows (my personal ranking in parenthesis):

1. Caretaker, 2008, Arroyo Grande Valley, Central Coast, CA. $9.99 at Trader Joe’s.  Given the fact that this was the youngest Pinot of the tasting coupled with the $10 price point, I was surprised this one took the top spot of the tasting.  On the nose, I found bright strawberry, raspberry, hints of spice with floral components that led to flavors of violets and more red fruits.  I gave this one an ‘ok’ in terms of acidity and found it slightly off balance – likely a result of its youth.  Or maybe it was really off balance – my ability to decipher my ‘wine tasting shorthand’ scribbled on my score sheet after the fact is questionable.  I do suspect this wine will show better a year from now. (Finished 3^rd in my ranking.)
2. Martin Ray, 2007, Santa Barbara County, CA.  I’m not sure the exact price for this wine here in Virginia, but this one can be found widely online for $19.99. This wine reminded me of one of my very favorite candies – Lifesavers Raspberry Cream Cremesavers.  The wine was dominated by raspberry crème throughout, with nuances of cherry and earth.  I wrote TANNIC in all caps on my tasting sheet, which is usually an indicator of a wine needing more time to open up.  I’m not too surprised that this one finished second in the overall scoring – these round, fruit crème wines tend to be crowd pleasers.  (Finished 2^nd in my ranking.)
3. De Ponte Cellars, 2007 Dundee Hills Estate Pinot Noir, Dundee Hills, Dayton, OR.  $55 at the winery.  I picked up this wine several months ago during a visit to the Willamette Valley.  DePonte has some of the most amazing views in the Dundee Hills <SEE photo at bottom>.   This wine shows a pure nose of violets, raspberry, cherry, baking spice with hints of mushrooms.  In the mouth, I initially got a Dr. Pepper flavor with spices, strawberry and raspberry.  The tannins, acidity and fruit worked very well together.  This ranked #1 on my tasting sheet with a score of 8.5, but I will admit that I may have been slightly biased since I could immediately tell this was the DePonte Pinot.  Although this wine finished 1^st in my personal rankings, I feel this one would have benefited from more time in bottle. (Finished 1^st in my ranking.)
4. Bogle, 2007, Russian River Valley.   $9.99 at Total Wine.  Like all of the Bogle wines that I’ve tried, this one is a solid effort at the $10 price point.  Although Bogle wines are not transcendent, they do provide reasonably good value at the $10 – $12 price point.  On the nose I found earth, cherry and toasty oak, which carried over on to the palate along with vanilla cola and floral flavors.  Solid tannins, but a bit disjointed.  Although I did like this pinot, I must admit that I expected more fruit from this one.  (Finished 5^th in my ranking.)
5. Scotchman’s Hill, 2007, Geelong, Australia.  I believe I paid about $20AU ($18US).  I brought this Pinot back with me from my trip to Australia earlier in the year.  This particular Pinot showed remarkably well at a tasting I attended in Melbourne – unfortunately that tasty goodness wasn’t included in this bottle.  A really watered down ruby color in the glass, this wine had a nose of cola, mushroom and earth with sour cherry flavors in the mouth followed by a short, sweetart candy finish.  Really disjointed wine.  (Finished 7^th in my ranking.)
6. Adelsheim Elizabeth Reserve, 2007, Willamette Valley, OR.  $39.99.  Another surprise – can’t believe this wine didn’t finish higher in the overall rankings.  The 2006 ‘Elizabeth Reserve finished a strong first in a small tasting I attended the week before this tasting. Surprisingly, it finished in the middle of the pack in this tasting.  I loved the nose – cherry, raspberry, sweetart candy, and spice throughout.  Very well balanced with nice acidity.  Long red fruit finish.  (Finished 4^th in my ranking.)
7. Belle Vallee 2006 Reserve, Willamette Valley, OR.  $37.99.  The first note on my tasting sheet was ‘weird.’  Standard, generic Willamette Valley Pinot – cola, earth, cherry.  No finish.  I’ve had this particular wine before and I didn’t much like it then either.  (Ranked 6^th on my tasting sheet.)
8. Erath, 2007, Oregon.   ~ $19.99.  Smokey, oaky, light fruit, sour cherries.  Tannic, out of balance, smooth as a car with square tires.  This wine was not showing well at all – ranked at the bottom of nearly every taster’s scoring sheet. (Ranked last on my tasting sheet.)

The aftermath...

In the spirit of continual improvement, I feel a different format based on each taster’s ranking, not score, would provide a more accurate basis for ranking the wines.  Since one very low score can artificially skew the results, using each taster’s rankings (1 = most favorite, 2 = next favorite, etc.) seems the most equitable way to determine the winner.  (since I’m a genius, I have to be right about this) Also, the next time I write a blind tasting review, I plan to ask the other tasters to provide tasting notes for their favorite wine of the tasting to include in the post.

To accompany the wine, we had pork tacos with spicy avocado slaw, braised pork belly atop polenta, pork sliders, and a handful of accouterments.

A big thanks to Rob, Jen, Jay, Sharon, Kim, Brent, and my lovely wife for sharing your pork dishes, wine, and friendship on Saturday night.  I hope we can do this again soon.

View at De Ponte Cellars

View at De Ponte Cellars

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Aside from waking up and breathing, I seem to have just two consistent themes in my daily life – my family, and travel.   Living out of my suitcase, schlepping through airports, trying to keep up with work and my family responsibilities, I have come to appreciate simplicity and consistency.

In the spirit of consistency, while on the road, I try to get together with other wine bloggers at least once a week, and explore new wine bars or restaurants at least one other night a week.  For the remainder of the week, I tend to veg, order room service, put the TV on something mindless like Seinfeld reruns or South Park and just catch up on email backlog.  To pair with these stay-in-the-hotel-and-veg-nights, I crave/need/have to have a wine that is economical, reliable and consistently good.  Finding such a wine, one that is widely available throughout the US, is more difficult than it may sound.

One such wine – economical, reliable, consistent, and widely available – is the A to Z Pinot Noir.  A to Z Pinot seems to be available everywhere – Florida, California, Washington, DC, Virginia, St. Louis, NY – at a reasonable $17 – $21.

A to Z Pinot is produced by Dundee, OR based A to Z Wineworks.  A to Z was founded in 2002 by Bill Hatcher, formerly of Domaine Drouhin.  According to the A to Z website, they are the fastest growing Oregon winery, and has a current annual production of 120,000.

A to Z 2007 Oregon Pinot Noir – Made from at least 30 different vineyards spread across all of the Oregon AVAs that grow Pinot.  Garnet color in the glass, this Pinot has a nose of raspberry, fresh mulberries that you find here in the woods (the red ones), cherry, hints of root beer and mint on the nose.  Cherry and earthy flavors dominate the mouth.  Mild tannins and fruit work well together.  Shorter finish than I would have liked, but at this price point I’m not expecting nirvana.  64,000 cases of this wine produced.

Over the last few years, I’ve consumed a couple of cases of A to Z, one bottle at a time, on veg-out nights and this wine has always been consistently good.  Looking for a nice, reasonably price, consistent, Tuesday night wine?  Check out the A to Z Pinot.

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What do you find to be the most effective method to learn about wine?  Reading? Tasting? Wine classes?  For many, ‘learning by doing’ is the most effective way to learn about wine, or any other subject for that matter.

Learning by doing is an economic concept that can be roughly defined as the capability of workers to improve their productivity by consistently repeating the same actions.  For businesses, this consistent repetition – learning by doing – leads to production and cost efficiencies.  For us humans, we tend to get better at stuff – golf, writing, and even wine tasting – via repetition.  Duh, of course, it’s common sense, eh?

Reading about, and tasting a lot of wine is how I began my wine education back in 2005/2006 after suffering a bite from the ‘wine passion bug.’  Although I did learn quite a bit about wine from reading The Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator and a host of wine-related books, along with tasting a lot of wines, I’ve found that my personal wine knowledge tends to expand more by tasting with other people.  By tasting and talking through the wines with a group, and looking at a wine through someone else’s lens, I learn exponentially more than just reading about wine or having a glass or two a night.

To that end, I try to attend all of the small group tastings I can during my weekly travels.  Last week I was in the Washington, DC area working and took that opportunity to get together with fellow wine blogging friend, Dezel of Vine Spot and a couple other winos for a Pinot tasting.  We all threw in a few bucks and got together at Dezel’s place with a few bottles of Pinot.

We tasted five Pinots in the following order:

• Philip LeHardi Mercurey 2005, $25.99
• Muirwood 2007 Pinot Noir Reserve, Suter Vineyard $19.99
• Adelsheim 2006 Pinot Elizabeth Reserve, $39.99
• J 2006 Pinot Noir, Thomas Vineyard, $28.99
• Domaine Jean Luc Dubois Chorey-Les-Beaune Clos Margot 2005, ~$22

First up for the tasting was the Philip LeHardi Mercurey 2005 1er Cru.  Had this been a blind tasting, I would have picked this one as an Anderson Valley, or Russian River Valley Pinot vice a Burgundy.  Very fruit forward – with an intense violet soap aromas along with spice, cherries, and earth.  Equally intense floral flavors, spice and wet straw flavors in the mouth.  A couple of the other guys noted intense mushroom aromas on the nose that I didn’t detect (one of the benefits of group tastings).  Not as much minerality and acidity as I would have liked, but a solid effort and price point for a Premier Cru Burgundy.

Second up in the tasting was the Muirwood 2007 Pinot from Central Coast, CA.  This one was my least favorite of the tasting – the oak treatment overwhelmed the fruit.  18 months in new French oak was way too much for this wine. (my personal opinion – ONLY neutral oak should be used with Pinot) I gave this wine the benefit of the doubt by giving it quite a bit of time in the glass to air out, but the sweet oak aromas and flavors seemed to just get stronger.  This is a big pass.

After the Muriwood, there was only one way for this tasting to go – UP!  Next up was the Adelsheim 2006 Pinot Elizabeth Reserve from Willamette Valley, Oregon.  An elegant, velvety Pinot with cherry, raspberry, spice, earth, and floral notes throughout – followed by a lengthy berry and spice finish.  Adelsheim is one of the premier Willamette Valley producers, and has never disappointed.  At $40, this certainly isn’t a Tuesday or Wednesday night wine, but would make a great wine to open for the holidays.  My favorite wine of the evening by far.

Next up was the J 2006 Pinot Noir from the Russian River Valley.  I consider this a typical mid-level RRV Pinot.  On the nose, this wine showed raspberry, cherry cola and intense pepper aromas that I found unusual.  On the palate, this wine is medium bodied, ‘ok’ balanced, with a flavor profile similar to the nose – cherry cola, wet mushroom, baking spice and more pepper.

The last wine in the line up was the Jean-Luc Dubois Chorey-Les-Beaune Clos Margot 2005.  This wine started out with an unusual, and off putting cheddar cheese aroma that quickly burned off with a little air (thankfully).  On the nose I found cherry, raspberry, nice coffee, and wet straw aromas.  Medium bodied wine with flavors of an herbal component with mineral, cinnamon and cherry.  I felt this one had more notable acidity than any of the other Pinots in the line up.

My ranking for the evening, in order …

1. Adelsheim 2006 Pinot Elizabeth Reserve, $39.99
2. J 2006 Pinot Noir, Thomas Vineyard, $28.99
3. Jean-Luc Dubois Chorey-Les-Beaune Clos Margot 2005, ~$22
4. Philip LeHardi Mercurey 2005, $25.99
5. Muirwood 2007 Pinot Noir Reserve, Suter Vineyard $19.99

As with many small-group tastings, I found this Pinot tasting to be a great time to just hang out, talk wine and learn about how others view and perceive wine.  Hat tip to Dezel for hosting the tasting – hopefully he can make it to our ‘Pork and Pinot’ tasting next week.

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