I always knew there was a reason...I'm one sharp, dude!

About Corx Wine Bags

Corx Wine Bags was founded in 2005 by two friends who had passion for wine.  One of them being a self proclaimed klutz and the other a self proclaimed sewing master, they sought to create the ultimate wine bag.  After several prototypes the “Tre” 3-bottle wine bag was born.  A wine bag of the highest quality that prevents bottles from breaking in transit for those klutz’s out there, while keeping your wines at proper storing temperatures during your trip to your favorite BYOB restaurant, picnic location or bringing bottles home from your favorite winery.   For more information about all of our wine bags please visit us at www.corxwinebags.com

I first tried this wine in 2008 when visiting family in Santa Rosa.  Great producer who understands the value of great everyday wines!

Cheers!

-Kevin

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Enjoy!

-K

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http://www.winesnw.com/orhome.html

Oregon wineries are generally small and decentralized within each official wine region of the state.  They are often winemaker- or family-owned. Most Oregon wine regions lie in valleys between the southern Cascade Mountains that run through the state and its Coastal Range to the west.

The northwest portion of Oregon wine country is celebrated for its cool-climate grape varieties, including Pinot Gris, Riesling, Chardonnay, and especially Pinot noir.  The Southern Oregon appellation (AVA), starting south of Eugene, includes the Umpqua Valley AVA, the Red Hill Douglas County AVA, the Applegate Valley AVA and the Rogue Valley AVA, all located in the southwestern portion of Oregon State.  These regions, along with the vineyards of the Columbia Gorge AVA, are generally higher, much warmer and significantly drier than those of the northwestern quadrant of Oregon State including the Willamette Valley AVA.

It wasn't until early 2005 that the Southern Oregon appellation (AVA) was federally authorized as a macro viticultural area, encompassing the previously authorized regions of the Umpqua, the Applegate and the Rogue Valleys.

The rich variety of  "micro climates" in southern Oregon (as well as in the Columbia Gorge AVA at Oregon's north central border) provide distinctive vineyard locations capable of nurturing high-quality Bordeaux and Rhone grape varieties, as well as French Burgundian varieties such as Pinot noir and Chardonnay.   The Columbia Gorge appellation, located on both the Oregon and Washington sides of the Columbia River, was authorized as an official American Viticultural Area (AVA) for both states in June 2004.

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About Corx Wine Bags

Corx Wine Bags was founded in 2005 by two friends who had passion for wine.  One of them being a self proclaimed klutz and the other a self proclaimed sewing master, they sought to create the ultimate wine bag.  After several prototypes the “Tre” 3-bottle wine bag was born.  A wine bag of the highest quality that prevents bottles from breaking in transit for those klutz’s out there, while keeping your wines at proper storing temperatures during your trip to your favorite BYOB restaurant, picnic location or bringing bottles home from your favorite winery.   For more information about all of our wine bags please visit us at www.corxwinebags.com.

Ridge Geyserville is probably one of my top 5 zinfandels...period!

Yes, it's $35/bottle, AND it's worth every penny!

Cheers!

-K

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I was shopping for wine this past weekend, and my wine shop was doing their annual buy one bottle at regular price, get the second at 50% off.  Needless to say the high end bottles where cleaned out.  I am personally not a high end wine person because my pocket book does not allow it, nor would I probably head down that path if I could.  I enjoy the game of finding exceptional wine values.  Benton-Lane Pinot Noir 2008 is no exception.  2008's Pinot Noir growing season in the Willamette Valley was a historical year, that has turned out the highest quality Pinot Noir this region has ever seen.  I have always been a fan of this winery, and we even featured the 2008 Pinot Gris on our blog June of last year.  This wine left me speechless...granted it is only my opinion....but like the 2008 Pinot Gris Benton-Lane absolutely nailed it!  The wine is like silk...subtle in flavors, but the smoothness of the taste is absolutely incredible.  Even if you paid the typical retail price in our area of $23.oo, your drinking a wine that today could fetch twice that amount, and if you enjoy storing wine in your cellar you will have an amazing bottle in 5 years.  Pick up a bottle or two of this wine, you will be glad you did.

Winemaker's Notes:

This brilliantly ruby tinted wine has classic aromas of cherries, red currants and raspberries with more subtle hints of baking spice and vanilla layered in.  On the palate, it exhibits lithe fruitiness and lingering cherry and berry flavors.  The wine shows extraordinary balance and finesse with fine grained tannis that provide a nice framework to the silky mid-palate.

Acclaim:

November, 2010 90 points, Wine Spectator
“Light and spicy, with pretty cinnamon and nutmeg overtones to the red berry and floral flavors, lingering gently on the finish with finesse. Drink now through 2016.

November, 2010 Editor’s Holiday Wine Pick, Food & Wine
“Benton-Lane’s estate bottling has earth and spice notes, plus vibrant cherry fruit. It’s from Oregon’s 2008 vintage—one of the state’s best ever…”

October, 2010 90 points, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate
“The 2008 Pinot Noir Estate, medium ruby in color, offers up an alluring nose of cedar, spice box, incense, cherry and raspberry that jumps from the glass. Made in a racy style and already displaying some complexity, this savory, spicy effort has good depth, length, and 1-2 years of aging potential. It will provide considerable pleasure from 2012 to 2020. Issue #191

July, ‘10: Gold Medal, San Francisco International Wine Competition

June, 2010: Gold Medal, Oregon Wine Awards

Our friends Amy and Joe over at The Bottle Shop in Wilmette, IL just put out this great pick for White Burgundy.  This wine is available at their shop, and they have an amazing wine selection to choose from. 

You don't have to be a millionaire to drink fine white Burgundy. You just have to do a little label decoding work and know a little something about the hungrier, more ambitious grower/producers like Jean-Philippe Fichet, who has pieced together his Meursault-based domaine parcel by parcel without a whole lot of fanfare, not because the wines aren't great -- they are unambiguously wonderful --, but probably because they aren't showy. In fact, they're kinda quiet and sneaky wonderful examples of white Burgundy and that's just the way we like it. 

And what we have here is Fichet's Bourgogne blanc, which is the sleeper in his lineup of mainly single-vineyard, lieu-ditand 1er Cru Meursault. It's tastes like Meursault because it basically is Meursault but instead of $50 a bottle (or more) it's only $25. It gets exactly the same careful vineyard work (severe winter pruning on low yielding old vines) and low and slow elevage(long and unhurried malo in neutral second and third use oak barrels) that the vineyard designate wines get. Not as fleshy as Lafon, but nothing like the imposing and severe marble slabs of terroir from the old boys (Ente, Jobard, etc.) either. He's carved out a style that's somewhere right in the middle: very revealing of Meursault's complex terroir but with a really light touch all the same. The wines have a crystalline transparency coupled with a tonic and propulsive (but very natural feeling) inner energy. 

The Burgundy wine cognoscenti seems to like the purity and openness of Fichet's wines too. Dig around and little bit and you'll find that Meadows ("among the very best and purest in Burgundy"), Robinson ("so unlike the buttery cliché that I and my counterparts were brought up to expect), Tanzer ("a Meursault-like outperformer"), and Schildknecht ("a great talent"), really, anyone of consequence who covers Burgundy, circles back to the unparalleled purity and openness of Fichet's wines. For all kinds of reasons, Fichet's prices have remained stable (thanks Great Recession! although I think that also has a lot to do with his wines not being "showy") and thanks to Rare Wine Company (Fichet's importer, who by the way also imports Huet in Vouvray, say no more), the wines are generally available in the US.

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I have enjoyed Villa Maria's Sauvignon Blanc Private Bin for the last couple of years.  It is a great every day white wine no matter what time of year.  This wine packs a ton of flavor such as passion fruit, fresh citrus and pear flavor with a finish that is not to acidic and very clean.  I love to pair this wine with grilled salmon! 

Winery Notes: 

Fruit for this wine was sourced from vineyards across the Marlborough region. A blend of fruit grown in the Wairau and Awatere Valleys spanning a range of different meso-climates were incorporated. Careful attention was paid to vine health to give the vine the best chance to optimise the season and develop strong, clean flavours.  

The superb vintage and beautifully balanced vineyards produced grapes which were harvested at varying levels of ripeness over a five week period, providing for an array of flavours and blending options. The fruit was crushed, pressed and settled for 24 hours before being racked clean off press solids for fermentation. Both neutral and aromatic yeast strains were used. Fermentation was conducted cool at 12-14ºC to ensure maximum retention of delicate flavours and aromatics. Soon after fermentation was completed the wine was bottled to capture its vibrancy and freshness. 

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(AP) – 2 days ago

PRAIRIE DU SAC, Wis. (AP) — Ice wine, made from grapes that were allowed to freeze on the vine, has long been one of the most expensive dessert drinks because of the risk involved in its production.

Winemakers must harvest the grapes under precisely the right weather conditions and extract the high-sugar juice before they thaw. The slightest variation in temperature can doom an entire crop, but vintners skilled in the process can charge $4 per ounce or more.

Some winemakers now aim to make the beverage less expensive by limiting the uncertainty that can drive up the price. They harvest the grapes earlier in the fall and age them in freezers that simulate the chill takes place under ideal outdoor conditions. They say the technique leads to ice wine that's less expensive and more consistent in flavor.

A quality Riesling ice wine from New York can cost $75 to $100, while the artificial version would run about $50, said Jim Trezise, president of the New York Wine & Grape Foundation.

"If you're going pick the grapes and put them in the freezer, you can do that on your own schedule," Trezise said. "If you're going to pick according to nature's schedule, you literally have to have crews ready to go out at 5 in the morning when the temperature is just right. So the risk is greater and the labor costs greater to make naturally formulated ice wine."

Purists insist nature can't be improved upon and say half the fun of a great ice wine is being able to taste the winemaker's artistry and skill.

Tom Pennachetti, a winemaker with Cave Spring Cellars in Jordan, Ontario, said freezing grapes indoors defeats the purpose of making ice wine. There's a difference, he says, between letting each grape be exposed to the natural variations of outdoor temperatures and boxing up bunches in freezers where grapes in the center of the pack don't get the same exposure as those near the edges.

"Some people say what's the difference? That's a big difference," Pennachetti said.

The question in the industry is whether consumers will notice the difference. Some believe the cheaper artificial ice wines will allow wineries to expand their market to include less-affluent customers. Others believe loyalists, such as 83-year-old Paul Opichka, will be turned off.

The Milwaukee man was one of about two dozen people who braved frigid Wisconsin temperatures recently at the Wollersheim Winery in Prairie du Sac, helping pick frozen St. Pepin grapes for next year's ice wine.

Opichka said he volunteered for the harvest as a "labor of love" — but for natural ice wines, not artificial. Nature has a magic effect on the marble-size grapes that just can't be duplicated in an industrial freezer, he said.

The secret to ice wines is maintaining the proper degree of cold. At the right temperature, the moisture inside the grapes will freeze, and the pressing process will extract concentrated juice but leave the ice behind. The result is a sugar-rich liquid that ferments into a wine with a delightful balance of pleasant sweetness and tart acidity.

"It's honey for the gods," Opichka sighed. "Liquid gold."

Sandee Macht, 44, of Watertown, Wis., is a loyal drinker of Wollersheim's $47 natural ice wine. While she said she might try an artificial alternative, she gets a special thrill from the unpredictable nuances of each new natural vintage.

"You never know what you're going to get," she said. "There are always subtle differences that make them fresh and exciting."

Ice wines originated in Germany but are now made in Canada, New York, Michigan and Wisconsin — places where the weather gets cold enough to properly freeze the grapes.

Most ice wines are sold locally by the wineries that produce them, and because there's no group that tracks sales it's hard to know how popular they are. But the wines have caught on enough to be served at the White House, which last year paired a Riesling ice wine from Michigan with huckleberry cobbler and caramel ice cream during an official state dinner.

Many wineries say they sell out their limited stocks quickly, and experts believe the market can easily support both natural and artificial varieties.

Steve DiFrancesco, a winemaker at Glenora Wine Cellars Inc. in Dundee, N.Y., said artificial ice wines are clean, consistent and technically perfect, while natural wines have more depth, complexity and less predictability.

It's like music, he said. Some people prefer listening to CDs where the songs are identical every time, while others prefer live music, which always has some variation. His winery has an $18 artificial ice wine aimed at people who probably wouldn't plunk down big bucks for a dessert wine of any kind.

He said the marketplace benefits by offering both the natural variety and the cheaper alternative.

"People might try the one that's easier on price and then move up to something more expensive," DiFrancesco said.

Dinesh Ramde can be reached at dramde(at)ap.org.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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Cheers!

- Brandon

From water -- to wine? Fiji Water buys California winery

December 6, 2010 | 1:57 pm
Fiji Water Co., the imported bottled water firm owned by Beverly Hills entrepreneurs Lynda and Stewart Resnick, has acquired one of San Luis Obispo County’s oldest and most popular boutique wineries, Justin Vineyards & Winery.

The deal, which closed Friday, comes after Fiji and its parent company, Roll International Corp., sparked controversy by saying last month they were going to shut down Fiji Water operations in the island nation because of a large tax increase.

Fiji had planned to raise the tax it levies on the company to 15 Fijian cents a liter from one-third of a Fijian cent, according to a statement by the company. In U.S. dollars, the new tax is about 8 cents a liter. Fiji Water said in a statement that it was laying off nearly 400 Fijian employees and canceling construction projects in the country.

But then last week, the privately held company apparently changed its mind. In a statement, Fiji Water said it would reopen its bottling plant on Dec. 1 and that “we have also agreed to comply with Fiji’s new water tax law.”

On Monday, company officials declined to discuss the matter further. Company officials also declined to talk about the financial details of the winery sale.

John Cochran, president of Fiji Water, said the company had been looking to expand into other products to sell alongside its popular bottled water line carried by high-end hotels, restaurants and clubs. Justin Vineyards was started in 1981 by Justin Baldwin, a former investment banker, and his wife, Deborah. (The couple have said they will stay on with the business.)

The sale marks the eighth acquisition of a California winery this year, according to a news report and the Wine Institute, a trade group based in San Francisco. Many of these deals have come as California’s wine industry has been squeezed by falling land values, increased volume from countries including Australia, and recession-wary consumers shifting to cheaper brands.

But apparently, unlike some of its peers, “Justin has been doing quite well,” Cochran said. “They’ve just had their best year ever.… We plan to take a lot of that good momentum and push it farther.”

--P.J. Huffstutter

Photo: Justin Vineyards & Winery's underground wine caves. Credit: Justin Vineyards & Winery

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About Corx Wine Bags

Corx Wine Bags was founded in 2005 by two friends who had passion for wine.  One of them being a self proclaimed klutz and the other a self proclaimed sewing master, they sought to create the ultimate wine bag.  After several prototypes the “Tre” 3-bottle wine bag was born.  A wine bag of the highest quality that prevents bottles from breaking in transit for those klutz’s out there, while keeping your wines at proper storing temperatures during your trip to your favorite BYOB restaurant, picnic location or bringing bottles home from your favorite winery.   For more information about all of our wine bags please visit us at www.corxwinebags.com

I have had several of Charles Smith's wine before such as "Boom Boom" Syrah and "Eve" Chardonnay.  My wife brought home a bottle of 2007 "Chateau Smith" Cabernet Sauvignon this weekend and we opened it up last night.  A little about Charles Smith before I trudge forward.  Charles Smith was named 2009 Food & Wine Winemaker of the year and his latest project Charles Smith Wines: The Modernist Project is a straight forward approach to wine with the philosophy of "It's just booze - drink it!".  Charles is a self taught wine maker, but his upbringing and life experiences has put him in the elite of next generation winemakers. 

Well...on to the wine.  What a great purchase...thanks honey!  The wine was a dark ruby red, with the taste of cherries, raspberries and a pepper and cinnamon finish.  This wine should do well through 2015, but as intended enjoy it now amongst friends.

Cheers!

- Brandon

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