Back last September I installed a plug-in that allows me to do ad-hoc reporting right from within my blog software. Since this is the same place I go to post content, I look at these stats more often than those provided by my web host. I checked tonight and ran a report of the most popular content by hits since last September. Of course, the RSS feeds are at the top, so I left those out and just focused on the links that lead to content:

1 - Podcasts: you might expect this given that most people access the site for my podcast. If you go there now, it is a pretty ugly category output that makes it difficult to download shows in bulk. I’ll be replacing this with it’s own page shortly.

2 - Pinot Noir: The Sideways effect and all that; might be a good time to do another podcast focused on this grape from another perspective than my past podcasts. Perhaps a three-way shootout between California, Oregon and Burgundy?

3 - About: No surprise here. Looks like I need to update this with more information and perhaps a photo.

4 - Winecast 40 – Grenache: This is mostly driven from the link on the front page of CellarTracker (I interviewed Eric LeVine on the show). Thanks for the traffic, Eric

5 - Cabernet Sauvignon: Hmm, I haven’t covered this varietal since Winecast 29 and have yet to tackle Bordeaux. Now on my list for a podcast or two this fall.

6 - Tasting Notes: I post only about half of the notes I write. I will endeavor to do more frequently and even post older notes.

7 - Zinfandel: I love Zin and seems other do as well. Not sure if I need to do anything more on this varietal right now, however.

8 - Wine Blogging Wednesday: Lenn Thompson’s monthly virtual tasting that I have been participating in for the past 16 months. Viva WBW!

9 - Wine News: I’ve posted over 100 stories since I started, but have gotten out of the habit of late. I’ll have to get back into the groove here.

10 - Riesling: Another of my personal favorite varletals that I should revisit this summer. Maybe some New World Riesling?

Once I figure out how to pull a report of my most commented posts, I’ll list those and make some comments. This type of thing helps me to make sure the content of the podcast and blog are in tune with what you are looking for. Thanks for the clicks…

Today’s podcast is something completely different than I have ever attempted, a live recording from a podcast event held in Minneapolis on June 12, 2006. Although I am flying a bit by the seat of my pants before a live audience, I do talk about wine tasting tips, feature a virtual tasting of a wine and answer a few wine related questions from the audience. Back to a more normal podcast format later this week, I promise

Show Notes:
00:22 - Introduction
01:13 - Soundboard recording from “Live to HD” event
25:00 - Contact Details

Feedback: winecast@gmail.com
Copyright 2006 Acan Media, Inc. Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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The second anniversary of Wine Blogging Wednesday is hosted by Alder of Vinography who has picked white wines from France’s Loire as the theme. I might do a tour of the region or just focus on a single varietal depending upon the selection in town. Join me on August 2nd to find out more about this underrated French appellation.

Joel over at Vivi’s Wine Journal has posted the summary of WBW 23 featuring 26 entries from around the globe. As I expected, there was plenty of discussion about the definition of BBQ and a nice selection of wines tasted.

Stay tuned for the big announcement of the two year anniversary of Wine Blogging Wednesday to be posted in the next few days…

Campagna Gello, “Il Valore”, Primitivo, IGT Puglia, Italy 2004 ($5)

A Trader Joe’s market recently opened here in the Twin Cities. I’ve been a longtime customer for my days living in California, but my purchases over the past 20 years has been infrequent. For readers not familiar with the chain, they are a gourmet market that takes a different approach to stocking their shelves. In place of high-end brands, they carry high quality foods that they private label to keep costs low and pass this along to customers. Their frozen orange chicken is amazing and in expensive, but I digress.

When I first got into wine in the early 1980’s Trader Joe’s was a regular haunt for their private label wines, many very good values from top producers who sold these wines off in bulk for quick cash-flow. Trader Joe’s would label them and sell these for $1.99 or $2.99 a bottle. Occasionally they would also have a close out on a name brand wine that would quickly sell-out. The Trader Joe’s wine selection of today is dominated by the Charles Shaw brand of “Two-buck Chuck” fame. While some of these wines are good values (actually anything drinkable for $2-3 a bottle is a good value these days) the other exclusive brands usually offer better value for just a buck or two more.

One of these is “Il Valore” which is a brand for Italian wines that I have blogged and podcasted here before. They have 3 or 4 wines and the one that first caught my attention was their Primitivo that I will review now. I first heard about this wine from another blog and had high hopes this would provide for an interesting tasting. I’ve had several Primitivo in the past, but none of them were as good as most California Zinfandel despite the DNA linkage with Zinfandel and parent Crljenak Kastelanski. I think of Zinfandel and Primitivo as twins separated at birth with each adapting to their terroir and producing similar, but different wines. This wine does not change my opinion on this matter but is a pretty smokin’ value.

The wine is garnet in color with aromas of earthy blackberry and violets. The flavors are of dark fruit, earth and black pepper with dusty tannins and nice acidity for food. I can’t point to a better California Zinfandel at $5 a bottle with this much varietal character, but I really haven’t tried many lately. Don’t expect Zinfandel forward fruit and enjoy this wine for it’s earthy goodness and low for Zin (or Primitivo) alcohol.

13% ABV
Synthetic cork closure (easily removed)
Score: 8/10

This month Wine Blogging Wednesday returns to it’s normal first Wednesday of the month and host Vivi’s Wine Journal has picked a very appropriate theme for July: Barbecue Wines (or is it BBQ, or Bar-B-Que?). The history of BBQ appears to be an American invention, but there seems to be some debate on this if you look closer. Whatever the derivation, today the term means either the slow cooked meats prepared across the southern U.S. from pork, beef or chicken or grilled meats in general. I took the latter definition for the purposes of this post and podcast and chose three wines I think would pair well with summer grilling. Different than in the other months I have participated in this event, my three wines will be a white, a rose and a red. All quite dry and loaded with fruit flavors to stand up to the heartiest summer fare.

Since yesterday was Independence Day here in the U.S., my grilling choice was classic Wisconsin brats and traditional side-dishes, potato and macaroni salad. Whatever wines I select, they would need enough acidity to cut through the mayonnaise in the salads and brown mustard on the brats. I selected two different kinds of brats, the common “beer brats” and a new-age chicken with bacon and swiss cheese. Both presented an interesting flavor profile to deal with in matching wines, where in past years I’ve just reached for an IPA or dark beer.

Of course, the best wine for Bar-B-Que or grilled meats depends upon the type of meat roasted. If I made steaks, for instance, I would have probably selected three red wines to match here. But since I had foods that were not overpowering in their flavors, I had a pretty open spectrum of wines to choose from. My strategy was to find wines with enough flavor to stand up to the food, but also enough acidity to enhance the flavors and not overpower the food. The rule of thumb at this time of year is to choose a dry rose, so my first match was a Wolffer Rosé 2005 the winery sent me recently as a sample. You probably remember Wolffer from my interview with winemaker Roman Roth in Winecast 56. Their rosé is made from 48% Merlot, 39% Chardonnay, 8% Cabernet Franc and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon with the red grapes given a short time on the skins to minimize the color. The wine was totally made in stainless steel to accentuate the freshness of the fruit and retails for a reasonable $14 a bottle. This rosé is salmon in color with aromas of peach and fresh flowers. Rich and crisp in the mouth, showing cherry and citrus with a bit of white pepper on the dry finish. A very nice rosé for a hot summer’s day and nice accompaniment to my grilling yesterday. In fact, this might be the most versatile wine for grilled meats in the round-up. 11.5% ABV. Finished with natural cork. Score: 8.5/10

I usually don’t think of white wine and grilling, but I do think about white wines on hot summer days so I thought I would pick one from my cellar to see how it might work here. I’ve always liked the aggressiveness of Sauvignon Blanc, particularly from New Zealand, but I didn’t have any bottles handy from that country. What I did have was the 2005 vintage of Veramonte’s Sauvignon Blanc from the Casablanca Valley of Chile. I first tried this brand in my round-up on Winecast 12 last year and it has made it into my cellar ever since as a great value for hot summer days selling for $8-9 a bottle. The wine is light straw with a slight green hue. Fresh hay, lime and pineapple aromas with some gooseberry reminiscent of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. On the palate, there is tart grapefruit flavors with nice acidity to match with food. The match was especially good with the chicken brats adding an nice counter-point to the bacon and swiss cheese flavors. I’d recommend this one for grilled pork too, as long as there is not spicy BBQ sauce involved in the preperation. 13.5% ABV. Stelvin closure. Score: 8/10

Finally, I wanted to try a fruit forward red wine. After considering Syrah/Shiraz, I fell back on my old favorite Zinfandel, selecting a 2003 Chiarello Family Vineyards, Zinfandel, “Giana,” which sells for $28 a bottle. I first tasted Chiarello Zin at ZAP this past January and was very impressed with all their wines. You might recognize the family name from owner Michael Chiarello’s Napa Style TV show, book and website. If anyone knows how to make food-friendly wines, it’s Mr. Chiarello, but I have to say that you need a steak or, better yet, Mexican food to match with this Zin. The wine is garnet-purple in color with powerful aromas of blackberry, plum and licorice. In the mouth it is substantial with blackberry jam, black pepper, spices and silky tannins. A hedonists Zin that somehow balances the substantial alcohol with fruit. Delicious, but overpowering to my 4th of July brats. 16.1% ABV. Finished with natural cork. Score: 9/10

So what did I learn this month? That a range of wines go well with grilled meats. If I had some true Bar-B-Que to match here, I think only the Chiarello Zin and Wolffer Rosé would have made the cut. For best wine, it easily goes to Chiarello Family Vineyards, Zinfandel, “Giana” 2003 and best value to the versatile Wolffer Rosé 2005. Thank to Joel over at Vivi’s Wine Journal for hosting this month and a great theme. I’m looking forward to seeing what founder Lenn has in store for the two-year anniversary of WBW next month.

Show Notes:
00:21 - Welcome and show theme
01:10 - Matching wine with Bar-B-Que or grilled meats
03:56 - Veramonte, Sauvignon Blanc, Casablanca Valley, Chile 2005 ($9)
04:58 - Wolffer Estate Vineyards, Rosé, Long Island, New York 2005 ($14/sample) +
06:20 - Chiarello Family Vineyards, Zinfandel, “Giana” 2003 ($28) *
07:50 - Best of tasting
07:58 - Best value
08:15 - Wrap-up and contact details
08:50 - Next show theme

Feedback: winecast@gmail.com
Copyright 2006 Acan Media, Inc. Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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Mankas Hills Vineyards, “Amelie”, Suisun Valley 2004 ($14.90)

Mankas Hills is a family winery with a passion for Cabernet Sauvignon and, interesting enough, for blogging. They are among a few wineries that have taken the plunge into the blogisphere as another way to connect with customers. I received this sample after responding to their post a few weeks back and applaud their initiative as being the first California winery to take a page from the Stormhoek playbook. If you haven’t heard of the Suisun Valley AVA, you are not alone, as I had never heard of it either. According to Appellation America, the AVA has a long history of growing wine grapes and being just north of the Napa Valley, it is not a stretch to expect some pretty interesting Cabernet-based blends coming from the appellation.

Amelie is one of those blends being 75% Estate Cabernet Sauvignon and 25% Merlot grown elsewhere. The wine is garnet-purple in color with aromas of blackcurrant, blackberry, eucalyptus and vanilla. In the mouth it is nice and rich with nicely concentrated blackberry and blackcurrant fruit finishing with sweet tannins a very slightly bitter note which didn’t bother me very much. This is a very good wine and a nice value at less than $15 a bottle. 13.9% ABV. Finished with natural cork. Score: 8/10

I hope more wineries follow Mankas Hills’ lead and send bloggers samples of their wines for review. It will certainly extend the conversation about their wines far outside the traditional wine media and encourage positive word of mouth. So if you see Amelie in the supermarket or wine store, give it a try.

I’ve been working in Napa these past few days and one of the tasks was holding a blind comparative tasting at the winery. I’ve participated in a few blind tastings in the past, but this was my first one with wine professionals. The flights were setup around 2-4 benchmark wines for each varietal along with our bottling. We scored on a 20 point scale and averaged these scores across all tasters to determine the final rankings.

Tasting with three winemakers was the most interesting part of the experience. These guys are part farmer, chemist and artist trying not to screw up what nature has given them while driving a consistent style. It’s not an easy job and there is significant pride (and ego) on the line in this type of tasting. They are able to identify their own wines almost every time from their familiarity with them and personal tastes. This affected their scores for the wines but not the rest of us who were scoring them based upon which we liked best with only a couple lucky guesses as to the wines identity before the bags were removed.

What I took away after tasting 32 wines is that I’m better at reds than whites. This is not too much of a surprise for me as that is what I mostly drink and prefer. Also, subtle winemaking flaws and consistent varietal character does not bother me too much. The winemakers marked down wines with hardly detectable flaws and some unexpected aromas coming off of some wines that I thought didn’t detract from the wines’ charm. Lastly, it is interesting to cross-reference wine press scores and compare them with ours. In a couple of cases highly ranked wines were at the bottom of our tasting that had us wondering if we had a bad bottle. Of the 32 wines in the tasting, two were corked; about par for the course, unfortunately.

My main take away from this experience is that tasting blind is a great equalizer for most of us and you can learn quite a bit from the results to improve your wines.