by Dan Foster
The Wine and Food Society of Clark County conducted the wine judging of featured Northwest Wines at the Camas Wine, Arts and Music Festival on August 19, 2006. Several Society members, along with other knowledgeable wine enthusiasts acted as judges. This event was held at the Port of Camas-Washougal Marina Park on Saturday, August 19th. There were over 40 wines submitted. Selecting the best was conducted by 8 judges. The winner's are listed below. WINEMAKER'S CHOICE 1st Place Columbia Valley 2004 Sangiovese 2nd Place Townshend - Yakima Valley 2004 Riesling 3rd Place Marshal's 2002 Cabernet Franc SYRAH 1st Place Wind River 2004 Syrah 2nd Place Sleeping Dog 2003 Syrah 3rd Place Marshal's 2002 Syrah MERLOT 1st Place Sleeping Dog 2003 Merlot 2nd Place Windy Point 2003...
by Remie Law
14th CONCORSO ENOLOGICO INTERNAZIONALE 40th VINITALY, Verona-Italy 28 March – 02 April 2006 a report of the proceedings by a member of the JURY from Singapore (with photos see http://www.happyvines.com/VinItaly06) SAME STROKES : DIFFERENT FOLKS This Competition brings together a whole host of personalities, nationalities and types into ONE hotel and ONE venue. It offers great opportunity to interact or not. To establish new friendships and deepen or strengthen old ones or not. It is an amalgamation of cultures but only one culture is foremost - the culture of WINE that binds all participants. We talk about everything under the sun but ultimately the subject of WINE tend to crop up. "Oh, I just tasted this wonderful PX ........ 1941, no less!!!" "Ugh! So much wood and no fruit in som...
by Denman Moody
When I cut my teeth (or in this case, stained them) on wine in the mid ‘70s, almost everything was French. If anyone was venturesome (or wealthy) enough to order an expensive wine for home or at a restaurant, it was always French. In fact, waiters would routinely ask, with a smile, whether you wanted the French wine, or with a slight sneer, the “domestic” one. Of course, nobody desired the latter. For hundreds of years, France had been in the limelight regarding wine. Virtually all the noble grape varieties had originated and reached their apex in France. Since the 1855 classification of red Bordeaux wines, the First Growths (including Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, which had been elevated to a First Growth in 1973) were preeminent in the world of Cabernet Sauvignon. For centuries, it w...
by Eric V. Orange
Q. I hate my job. How can I work in the wine business? A. The first thing to realize is that entry level into the wine business is not typically a high paying position. If you are currently making a good paycheck, chances are that you are going to have to accept an initial pay cut. The simple reason is that there are far more people who want a job in the wine business than there are jobs in the wine business. I'm going to generalize here because there are always exceptions. The majority of jobs in the wine business are filled rather quickly from within the local markets. Most of the job openings are at the wholesale level and the first line of "qualified" and available people are from the local Restaurants or Wine Shops. The higher-level jobs of Supplier or Marketing Reps or Vineyard...
by Gabrio Tosti
One of the few true things spoken in the movie Sideways was when Virginia Madsen said "the wine is alive." While wine might not meet all the criteria required by science to be a life form of its own (it doesn't reproduce, but it would be nice if it could) it certainly exhibits some of the phenomena of life. Properly interpreted, wine grows, adapts, and responds to stimuli. It seems to me that wine even has memory. Those memories have roots in wine's early life as a plant: weather conditions, adversities, soil content, aging of the plant, invisible qualities in the air, and everything, everything that happened to the vines in the vintage year leaves indelible organic imprints on the fruit. Wine grows, too, once the fruit leaves the plant. Like a child that needs to be watched (and...
by Tracy Anderson
(as seen in Edible Cape Cod, July 2005) There’s no better time than summer to uncork a bottle of great wine. But for those of us who favor a big, lusty red, the warm weather might seem daunting when pairing our favorite wines with the season’s best foods. But although most people think white wine in the summer, there are actually many reds (both light and full bodied) that pair wonderfully with a variety of foods and occasions. In thinking about our summertime pleasures on Cape Cod, barbeques, clambakes, weddings and outdoor theme parties come to mind. Ice-cold beer and Margaritas are of course, always welcome, but there’s always room for some interesting wines that will turn a standard barbeque into a memorable culinary event. One of the great things about wine is that...
by Jennifer Rosen
"Drink your precious wine until you puke your guts out and the sweeping staff carry your carcass away." "Use the buffet line and keep your yap shut." Just some of the nicer responses to the column I wrote about overeager servers. Frustrated customers outnumbered irate waiters three to one, but sparks flew from both sides. Diners were fed up with over-intimate waiters interrupting, annoying, "Killing us with service," as well as with "Wait staff who want to become the star of your evening." One diner writes: "I don't really care what your name is—I assume you will be my waiter as you are standing next to my table with a pad and pencil waiting to take my order." Another concludes, "If a waitperson can't tell when a customer is through, perhaps a career change is in order." M...
by Jennifer Rosen
You've seen those wine cellars with travertine counters, cleverly interlocking zebra-wood racks, and age-tracking software. All that money could go into wine! Don't they get it? It's a cellar! You know, as in cell? It's for roots and coal, spiders and snakes. This is where you lock bad children. Pity the naughty little wine snoblings, reduced to screaming, "Let me out, Mommy! There's white Zinfandel in here!!” Europe does cellars right; ancient, dank caves where you don't need the aim of William Tell to spit. One Old World winemaker lifted a hatch in his cellar floor and showed me shrimp swimming around, inches below our feet. Talk about damp! Another cellar had a foot of mold covering the walls and ceilings. In it, glimmering randomly like mosaics at Ravenna, were coins from eve...
by Jennifer Rosen
Judging by my e-mail, an alarming number of you have quit drinking red wine because it gives you a headache. Do not go gentle into that good night! As inventions go, red wine ranks right up there with indoor plumbing, novocaine and the wheel. More than a great pleasure, it’s been shown to prevent heart disease, osteoporosis, cancer, memory loss and memory loss. (Note to self: drink more red wine). I’ll bet people nag you, "Oh, come on, try a little. You’re just being hypersensitive!" At last, you are vindicated, because now your condition has an official name. If you’re one of those folks who gets a pounding headache, perhaps with nausea and flushing, within an hour or less of drinking even a small glass of red wine, you have Red Wine Headache Syndrome. Since RWHS research has ...
by Jennifer Rosen
The media just adore knocking the stuffing out of wine snobs. Last year they pounced on a study claiming that blindfolded, you couldn’t tell red wine from white. This week they’re thrilled to inform us that wine and cheese, that staple of gallery openings everywhere, don’t really go together. “Cheese Spoils Fine Wines - So Stick to the Plonk!” screams one headline. “Wine and Cheese Incompatible,” squeals another. And, “Cheese and Wine in Worst Possible Taste.” A study by Hildegarde Heymann, professor of viticulture and oenology at the University of California, had eleven trained tasters evaluate a variety of red wines with cheeses ranging from mild to stinky. They concluded that, across the board, cheese mutes flavors and aromas in wine, canceling out oak, berries...
