100 Wines - Winter of Wine

In the spirit of my post on wanting to write more, I've decided to open up this blog to my general musings. I'm here to write about topics that, at the very least, I currently think are interesting. All that being said I would like to talk about the winter of 2015-2016, specifically my 'Winter of Wine.' I'll start with my strategy on tasting, a couple notes on the experience, my broad conclusions, and then give recommendations of bottles by price point. I actively stay away from trying to teach anything about wine.

For most of my life I have drank boxed wine, and bottles that cost between $10-$20. Occasionally at a work dinner, or a fancy occasion I drink more expensive wine. I agree pricier wine can taste a little better. I also acknowledge some people would find that last sentence blasphemous.

I generally like wine. I find too much beer makes me gassy, and I find hard liquor (or cocktails) are either inconvenient or don't necessarily fit the occasion. So I set out to attempt to drink (try) 100 bottles of wine. I have done something similar in the past, using Beer Advocate to do a 'Winter of Beer' back in 2012-2013. I learned that I generally like higher alcoholic beers, that are fairly well balanced, explicitly not sweet, and sometimes on the hoppier side. If you care to know more than that, you can visit my reviews here.

Strategy 

I use Vivino to track my wines, implementing the same strategy for tasting as I did beer: What does it look like? (Look) What does it smell like? (Nose) What does it feel like? (Mouth Feel) and What does it taste like? (Taste) I then gave wines an overall rating. I specifically targeted bottles in the $15-$35 range, though occasionally found myself outside. My top goal was finding styles of wine that I prefer, which would help me in the long term pick out bottles that I had a strong chance of enjoying regardless of price range. I implemented a full out Fake-It-Till-You-Make-It strategy when reviewing the wine, which should be obvious if you peruse the actual reviews.

To qualify as a proper review I required an entire glass. I have officially reviewed  more than 120 wines and in this post will share my results. Full disclosure, this blog is definitely not sponsored, and these are simply my preferences. I make no promises about whether or not anyone else will like the wine that I do, and I loosely apologize for to the winemakers who's wine I trash.

Wine Sample

In terms of sourcing what I drank, I mixed it up between a couple different distributors for my bottles (mostly east coast) and was not shy about getting involved with wine by the glass in the New York and Philadelphia regions.

I drank Cabernet's more than anything else, followed by Pinot Noirs and some red blends. California dominance not surprising given my geography.

This is the list of wines where I had more than one bottle of a specific varietal located in a region. This is how Vivino splits up the wine, so no reason to fight against that for now.

Ratings

I rarely gave a wine 1 star. I like wine. Rating the consumption of alcoholic grape juice a 1-star experience did not happen. Even if the bottle was bad, something I rarely experienced, it would be unjustified to give those a poor rating without tasting a non-spoiled version. All that being said, I never gave a wine 5 stars. At my extremes, I rated six wines 4.5 stars, five wines 2 stars, and one wine 1.5 stars.

Note this review:

Teetering on undrinkable yet I still gave it 2 stars?!? I should be more harsh. 

My worst wine?

Definitely a style issue - but I would consider recommending the worst wine of 120+ I drank?!?!?

In general seems that I was too forgiving, or I lack differentiation abilities, or I just live in a world where on a 1-5 scale for anything 95% of my reviews will fall between 2 and 4.5. There are all sorts of interesting implications if that is true, but for better or worse that lies outside the scope of this post.

Price of Wine

Three of my six 4.5 star ratings were under $30, as was the majority of the wine I tried during this period. While I did rate some nicer wine worse, on average if I knew the price of the wine, I believe I was skewed a bit higher (though also could be more critical of bad 'expensive' wine.) This is partly correlated to environment as well. 

Environment

Not surprising, but it is strictly true that I would often enjoy wine better out of wine glasses than Solo cups, and at a white table clothed dinner table over standing at a bar. The thinner the wine glass, the better. Decanting probably does more for me in presentation than it does in a changing of flavor profile. Candles always help. 

Random Thoughts and Tips

My experience with decanting has been mixed, with wines definitely changing, but differing opinions on getting better or worse. On average I would say they evolved better, but as I mentioned before, wine presented in a decanter will probably taste better because of presentation alone. Either way the conclusion is the same, buy a decanter, use it.

If I had to recommend one tip to a casual wine drinker (especially if drinking mostly at home) it would be to rinse your glass with a little wine before starting to drink. This sounds silly, but after numerous tests, my wine always tastes better if I take an ounce or so and rinse out my glass before pouring a full glass (some others might notice that the second glass of the same wine often tastes better.) Maybe it is because I don't wash my glasses well, maybe it is because soap gets stuck in there, or maybe because there is always some sort of water residue left over, but a quick rinse keeps my wine tasting better. This naturally applies to decanters as well. For what it's worth, I drink the rinse, I'm not that big of a fan of wasting wine, but if you prime the decanter and a couple glasses with that same ounce or two, you will notice it tastes disgusting.

Conclusions

I like higher alcohol reds, medium to full bodied, exhibiting dark over red fruits. Additionally I had a slight preference for more earth than not, and wood barrel aging over stainless steel. By style, I started looking more proactively for the Grenache, Syrah, Petite Syrah, Priorat, Rioja etc. They continue to be higher overall on my ratings list. They are currently the majority of my wine in storage, along with Brunello's from a trip last year to Montalcino. Expect further reviews on these styles in the future.

Top Picks by Price Range

Note I am sorting by Vivino's price ranges, so these are likely a blend of retail and restaurant price points. I would guess all of these skew a little cheaper.

Under $15 

Since Californian Cabernet's are local, you can get some decent wines cheap, hence most of these being Cabs. The Rhiannon Red is notably an incredible Syrah blend for the price point.

$15-$25

Entering this price range, you can start to get some good imports, and this is where I was able to isolate what styles I like the best. All of these are pretty big reds, including The Criminal, which despite the odd label is a delightful Petite-Syrah/Syrah blend.

$25-$50

Even I'm surprised a Pinot Noir snuck in here.

The Pricey Stuff

Other Wines

Loxton: located in Sonoma - really love this port. Heavy flavors of blueberry, but not too sweet overall fantastic.

I generally knew what I like in white wines. Most of this experience has been in reds, and maybe sometime in the future I could be open to doing a more rigourous tasting of whites. Below is a few go-to options.

Petroni is a winery visited a while back, that is at the very least super beautiful. A lot of their wines are very good, their Chardonnay is great. Cloudy Bay is a favorite for a higher end Sauvignon Blanc, with Oyster Bay being a more every day choice.

Now the Winter of Wine is over, as is the first non-travel related post on this site. Assuming all goes well, expect more coverage on the Spring of Something.

Cheers.