I receive a fair amount of samples from wineries, importers and distributors for review but this sample was a bit out of the ordinary. It seems that wine bloggers these days are mostly approached by small wineries looking for some online exposure but in this case the winery providing the sample was one of the mega Australian brands known on these shores as “The Little Penguin.”

I’m not sure is this brand is sold in it’s native country but if it is I’m sure most consumers look at it much in the same way we in America look at Gallo. Sound wine at very reasonable prices. I know that most of what I review here is somewhat removed from this price segment but I took a page from Gary Vaynerchuk’s book and decided to review this wine.

Before I get to the review itself, a bit of disclosure. The winery sent this wine as a sample for review with a bunch of summer items (see photo). As a wine marketing guy I scrutinized the additional items and came to the conclusion these should not be considered into the review. I mean, what are they thinking sending some sunglasses, flip-flops and suntan lotion? I’m not sure how this would effect my appreciation for the wine but maybe I’m just too critical of these things. Suffice it to say that such additional packaging doesn’t add to this, or any, wine one bit. The towel was nice, however

Tasting Notes:

The Little Penguin, “Summer White”, Chardonnay-Riesling, South East Australia 2006 ($8/sample) - Light straw-green in color with aromas of grapefruit and pineapple. Light bodied and easy to drink with green apple, peach and citrus flavors finishing off-dry and clean but on the short side. Seems more like a straight-ahead Chardonnay than the summer quaffer it’s billed as and could use a bit more acidity.

Synthetic cork closure
Score: 82

I read quite a bit about wine online and on crushed trees smeared with oil. On the latter format, I’ve been converting of late to the online editions of magazines like Wine Spectator as I don’t find the features too interesting and I can browse the tasting notes just as efficiently online (more so, actually) as in their print counterpart. So call this my contribution to the environment. By the way, I don’t count the Wine Advocate or International Wine Cellar as a “glossy” here; those are still best consumed in their classic, paper format.

One of my daily online sources is Decanter which publishes a fine RSS news feed which keeps me somewhat current with the thinking on wine “across the pond.” Whilst on a visit to downtown Minneapolis this weekend I noted the print version of this British wine journal on offer at a local news agent. I eagerly plunked down my £3.60 to sample the best wine magazine from the UK (eight bucks over here).

What a revelation.

As an old print guy, the production is excellent; much better, technically, than the Spectator or any other wine glossy in North America. But the writing is what drew me in. Instead of browsing features, I actually read them, and have a boatload more to read making this a fine value. I also appreciated the focus on Bordeaux and Burgundy which gave me an appreciation for the debate over the 2005 (a Parker favorite) and 2006 vintages like no other wine journal.

I also enjoyed comments like Steven Spurrier’s assessment of ‘06 Bordeaux as, “…not a vintage to buy off the peg.” My translation would be that 2006 Bordeaux is, in general, a bad value, but Mr. Spurrier’s understatement allows for the reader to infer their own experience. I enjoyed Mr. Broadbent’s comments comparing Madeira to the “morning coffee” at Christie’s with equal gusto. This took me back to my days working in London some years back, but I digress.

So the point here is to pick up a copy of Decanter when you see it, North American readers. It’s very worth your hard-earned eight U.S. Dollars or ten Canadian Dollars.

Earlier this week, Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs delivered a keynote at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. With his famous reality distortion field fully engaged, his “one more thing” at the end of his announcements was devoted to the über-hyped iPhone and how developers could write applications for it.

As Om Malik posted Tuesday, the iPhone will change the mobile phone landscape but it will also power Wine 2.0 because the application programming interface (API) for the iPhone is the web itself. At first, I thought this was pretty insignificant; in fact, my first reaction was “so what” but the more I think about a mobile phone running a fully featured desktop web browser the possibilities for interesting Wine 2.0 applications come to mind.

Want to post a tasting note to Cork’d or Bottletalk while sitting in a restaurant? No problem. Check prices or scores via Snooth or WineZap while in the aisle of your wine store? Go for it. Read your wine blogs? Of course.

Anything you can do on the web can now be consumed on the iPhone which will be great for Wine 2.0 usage and innovation. Sure, the pricing for this device is way too high now but the same could be said for my Motorola RAZR a few years ago; now they are free with contract.

Give this a couple years and you will really see some interesting traction in the marketplace and anyone with online wine information, recommendations and a wine store will benefit. As long as they make their user interface simple and easy to navigate with a mouse, that is.

For a taste of what’s to come, just fire up Safari on your Mac, and now Windows PC, and check out some of the early iPhone sites.

Photo credit: Engadget

Wine Blogging Wednesday rolls into June with a cooler weather theme of Washington State Cabernet Sauvignon. Catie over at Through The Walla Walla Grape Vine is hosting and has asked us to look beyond the mega brands of Washington State such as Columbia Crest and Chateau Ste. Michelle in our selections which I thought would not be a big problem here in the Twin Cities.

As it turned out, I found that the Cabernet aisles of many wine stores here are dominated by Napa Valley brands and some stores only stocked Columbia Crest and Chateau Ste. Michelle. But I was able to track down a selection at one of the larger warehouse stores here but didn’t come up with a bottling from Walla Walla (sorry Catie!). I also noted some older stock from 1996 and 1998 which either indicated slow turn-over or some close-out deals with the distributors here. But I took the plunge and picked a wine from a producer I know nothing about. I figured that is half the fun of this WBW thing, anyway.

So the wine selected was Barnard Griffin, Cabernet Sauvignon, Columbia Valley 1998 which I picked up for less than $20. The store where I found this wine is not known for their great storage conditions so I took the chance this wine would not be over the hill (likely) or corked (maybe 5% chance). With no “Plan B” if this wine was spoiled, I extracted the slightly dried out cork and broke it in half; not a good start. But once the wine was in the glass, I noted good color and sound aromas so I knew I might have something interesting to taste.

Barnard Griffin Winery was founded in 1983 by Rob Griffin and Deborah Barnard and produces a range of under their “Tulip” and “Reserve” labels. This Cab is from their value priced tulip range. The winery is located in Yakima Valley in south-central Washington just up the road from Walla Walla but the grapes for this wine came from the well known Columbia Valley AVA further north.

Tasting Notes:

Barnard Griffin, Cabernet Sauvignon, Columbia Valley 1998 ($17.50) - Rusty garnet in color getting a little tawny at the rim. Ripe black current, licorice, menthol and pencil lead aromas. Rich and mouth-filling blackberry and current fruit with some cracked pepper and chocolate finishing with dusty, but still noticeable, tannins and good acidity. This must have been a tannic monster at release but has now settled down and is drinking quite well. Given it’s maturity and price point, I think this is a nice value in Cabernet that will hold for another year before decline.

13.1% ABV
Natural cork closure
Score: 86

Thanks again to Catie for hosting this month and for opening my eyes to Washington State Cab outside of the big brands. I’ll keep my eye out for some Walla Walla Cab to try in the near future and post a review here. See you all next month when I’m guessing a white or rose theme might be the plan.

I’ll start back after a bit of an unintended blog hiatus with a simple request to Wine 2.0 tasting notes site entrepreneurs.

Please either publish an API to your tasting notes feature or build a Wordpress plug-in so I don’t have to cut and paste my reviews into your site.

Whoever delivers this first will be the exclusive site for republishing my reviews for a period of time. This is my main gripe about all these sites as it creates more work for me. I’d rather create more content than spend time pasting it into other site(s).

I’m even open collaborating with a site in order to build such a plug-in (yes, I have decent php coding chops). What I want to do is publish the review here and have it tagged in such a way to automatically be imported into your site in my ‘winecast’ account. Microformats would be a nice touch, but not required in the first release.

Who’s game?

BTW, I have about a hundred unpublished tasting notes that I will be posting on a more or less daily basis this summer starting today. I’m planning on tasting quite a bit more this summer on a few road-trips but that’s a post for another day