First off, I’ve always liked dolcetto. A lot. It’s not readily available at every corner grocer, giving it a certain sense of uniqueness, and its usually priced really fairly without the big name varietal markup. Plus, its undeniably Italian!
The name dolcetto always reminds me of dessert and the root word dolce does mean “sweet”. Indeed, [...]
At this point, our wine was actually wine, and although a bit acidic, it was starting to resemble something that might be drinkable.
Racking is the process of moving the wine from one container to the next, with the primary result being to lift the wine off of the lees (all the dead yeast and gunk [...]
This wine, from Barahonda, was recommended to us during a recent visit to Seattle’s great new Spanish/French capital hill joint, Olivar.
A blend of monastrell and cabernet sauvignon this wine is from the Yecla DO in Eastern Spain, not far from Valencia.
A couple of things I found interesting when researching the grape and place.
1. Monastrell [...]
The fermentation process moved along much quicker than we had planned on (or expected), and rushed to a stop after only 5 days.
I knew the fermentation was about finished when the cap no longer needed much punching down and started to slip back into the layer of juice. The next time we do this, I’d [...]
At this point, the must has sat overnight, and the sulfur which we added yesterday (see sorting and crushing) has killed off any of the unwanted naturally occurring yeasts that may have been present. We need to turn to all that grapey sugar into alcohol, which is called fermentation.
The important equation that is necessary [...]
Beyond picking of the grapes this has been the most labor intensive stage of winemaking. After the grapes arrive, you want to get the process started as soon as possible, for the sake of freshness of the fruit. A good fresh grape is the same as a fresh apple, and its flavor quality declines slowly [...]
On election night, we felt it necessary to put together an american meal. By the time it was on the table it was actually a quintessentially northwest american meal.
Armed with a bottle of Amity Pinot Noir, we tracked down some fresh alaskan silver salmon for the occasion. With a side of mashed potatoes and another [...]
A couple weekends ago Liz and I, with my folks, took a drive own through Oregon wine country, and made a stop at Amity Vineyards to sample their sulfur-free wines. Amity is about an hour south of Portland in the beautiful Yamhill County. Their location is an amazing southerly facing slope that looks out over the [...]
I love the changing of seasons, and all that comes with the transition of one to the next. This fall I felt that something was missing from days dominated by football and ever shorter and darker and wetter days.
Having just finished a fascinating book, “The Emperor of Wine” by Elin McCoy (more on this [...]
I think this might be the first Merlot to make the wine of the week column, and its well made Washington wine.
I’m sure that Hestia has as great a story as they do wine and branding (great logo by the way), but I just couldn’t find it. According to their about us page [...]
