{"id":1121,"date":"2019-05-09T13:05:28","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T20:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/?p=1121"},"modified":"2019-05-15T16:58:28","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T23:58:28","slug":"where-do-bad-wines-go-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/?p=1121","title":{"rendered":"Where do bad wines go to die?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even when Your West Coast Oenophile<\/strong> isn\u2019t trying, it seems everything somehow lands up relating to Sostevinobile<\/strong><\/span>. My recent trek to Corte Madera for the Preview Gala for Marin <\/span><\/a><\/span>\"\"<\/span>Open Studios<\/span><\/a> landed up having little to do with the artwork hung along the walls of Suite 325 in the Town Center<\/span><\/a> and even less to do with the eclectic collection of attendees than it did with the inscrutable potpourri of wines that accompanied this elegantly catered affair. Apart from a couple of Three Wishes\/Quail Oak or similar bottom-shelf selections ($3.50 Pinot?), my initial choices were a pair of Texas wines I similarly did not bother to record or try. And so the volunteer bartender produced a bottle of something from somewhere in Missouri. <\/span><\/p>\n

Now I am more than happy to cede the title of Earthquake Central to the Show Me State, but no matter how venerable their viticultural endeavors may be, I have little interest in switching my West Coast allegiance. But with choices so suspect, I capitulated and asked for a glass of Petit Verdot, \"\"heralding from an outpost in Virginia. The wine wasn\u2019t too bad, nor was it too good\u2014\u201cserviceable\u201d is the most frequent term other wine writers might charitably apply to such a vintage. Of course, it didn\u2019t take much to bring out the cynic in me after that. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t suppose you have anything from Delaware?\u201d I inquired, my sardonic side taking over. But much to my surprise\u2014or chagrin\u2014they did! The 2016 Laurel\u2019s Red<\/strong> from Nassau Valley Vineyards<\/span><\/a> of Lewes, DE is described as an unoaked \u201csemi-dry red table wine\u201d made from 100% Chambourcin, a varietal with which I had no previous familiarity. This French-American hybrid was first commercialized in the 1960s and apparently is popular in the renowned viticultures of New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. None of the literature I\u2019ve sourced lists Chambourcin\u2019s parentage, but, curiously, the grape is a teinturier<\/span><\/a>, like Alicante Bouschet, Saperavi, and Colorino, meaning it produces a red juice when crushed, even without skin contact. Any parallel to the flavors of these other noble grapes is an entirely different matter. <\/span><\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t help but wonder why, with a couple of dozen wineries now in Marin, not to mention its obvious proximity to the Petaluma Gap and Sonoma Coast AVAs, both of which cross over to the \"\"northern part of the county, the event organizers needed to resort to such farfetched selections. As it turned out, these wines had all been part of the recent San Francisco International Wine Competition<\/span>, donated through the extreme generosity of one of the judges, who was probably averse, as I would have been, to taking these leftovers home to foist onto those near and dear\u2014especially if these had been one of the 13 or so wines, out of 4,127 submissions that did NOT<\/strong> win a medal! <\/span><\/p>\n

Coda:<\/strong> a few days later, I found myself at a poolside soir\u00e9e, confronting a bottle of the 2016 Malbec Reserve<\/strong> from Becker Vineyards, a Texas winery that has garnered 11 SF International Medals for such wines as Muscat Chenin <\/strong>and Prairie Cuv\u00e9e<\/strong>. As I reluctantly quaffed this feeble rendition, I could hear echoes of Maude Findlay<\/span><\/a> admonishing her milquetoast husband, \u201cGod\u2019ll get you for that!\u201d
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even when Your West Coast Oenophile isn\u2019t trying, it seems everything somehow lands up relating to Sostevinobile. My recent trek to Corte Madera for the Preview Gala for Marin Open Studios landed up having little to do with the artwork hung along the walls of Suite 325 in the Town Center and even less to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[73,586,310,17,587,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alicante-bouschet","category-chambourcin","category-colorino","category-malbec","category-saperavi","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1121"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1142,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions\/1142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sostevinobile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}