Category Archives: Uncategorized

A new project

Posted on October 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

Beer Wine and Whisky will live on, though I expect many of the new posts will be beer-related, and sporadic. My drinking really is cyclical, and wine, for no particular reason, has been out of favor. I think drinking too many “value” priced offerings during my days of writing for the RFT may have done my wine palate in.

Anyway, I continue to be on a whisky kick, and expect to launch a new blog related to that soon.  I’m writing again, and stockpiling some posts, so the new site has some content when it launches.  Thanks for the patience, and the kind words, and I hope you find value in the new blog.

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Drinking to Forget

Posted on February 2, 2010 | 2 Comments

If I’m not careful, I find myself apt to skip over drinks I’ve tried and been “meh” about even though I am very strongly of the opinion that judging a beer, wine or whisky based on a single sample borders on the ridiculous.  I’ve written about this several times, and am not going to rehash it here.  I know that there are lots of drinks in the marketplace, and constantly retasting them would lead to an endless circle of revisiting disappointing beverages, and that’s not what I’m advocating.  There are some drinks that you just know are never, ever, even if you had to face a three day life insurance seminar sober otherwise, going to work for you.  But, sometimes when we “forget” about a drink due to a relatively small prior sample, we make a mistake.   I find that this is particularly true for bevvies that prompted a “so-so” reaction, and especially ones that should otherwise be in the wheelhouse of one’s taste.  It is these drinks that merit another chance.

Today’s lesson takes the form of Founder’s Red’s Rye.  I first had Red’s Rye four or five years ago (going with 4 for the rest of this post to make it less cumbersome), picking it up on a visit to my Mom who lives near Grand Rapids.  After drinking that six pack, I thought the beer was simply too sweet for my tastes, though I could certainly understand the appeal it seemed to hold for many other beer geeks.  Having had a whole 6 pack, over the course of several days and in several circumstances (by itself, with food, etc.) I held my belief relatively firmly, despite the relatively small sample.

I never bothered to return to Red’s Rye, even when it showed up on local shelves last year, based on my recollection of my one and only six pack four years ago.  That changed on my first visit to The Good Pie about a month ago.  The Good Pie had Red’s Rye on draft and I thought that touch of sweetness I remembered might make itself useful when it came to matching with pizzas Liz and I were ordering.  What I tasted that night was not what I remembered.  Instead, there was a much higher hop presence in the nose, and more than enough bitterness to balance the malt.

This pint led to a craving that built until last Friday when I picked up a six pack (bottled in November, 2009 – even fresher examples have come into the market since) from The Wine & Cheese Place.  I found this even more compelling than the pint at The Good Pie, and 5 of the 6 bottles didn’t survive the weekend, though they certainly contributed to its quality.

Now, I’m not remotely egocentric enough (really!) to believe that I have an accurate recollection of those bottles of Red’s Rye I had four years ago.  I have no idea whether, in order of decreasing likelihood: (1) my memory of Red’s Rye was inaccurate and/or morphed over time; (2) my palate has changed; (3) the Red’s I had four years was old and/or somehow abused; and/or (4) the Red’s recipe has been consciously tweaked, or came out a bit differently due to changing hop/malt crops.  And, I honestly don’t care.

It’s fine to ruminate about the cause, but what matters is that I now really enjoy the beer.  If I hadn’t bothered to revisit a beer I had not really liked after the first six pack, I’d be missing out on something it turns out I like quite a bit, and only runs $8.50 a six pack.  Instead, I’ve found something that’s going to make it into my regular rotation.  Well done, Founder’s, and my apologies for not giving it another shot sooner.  I know better than that.

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Posted in Beer, Uncategorized

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Quality in Quantity

Posted on May 28, 2008 | 8 Comments

Regular followers of the “What am I drinking” feature of this site probably note that I go through a lot more beer than wine or whisky. A lot of this has to do with alcohol content. By virtue of their higher alcohol content, wine and whisky necessarily are consumed in smaller quantities. I also don’t just kick back with a few glasses of wine or whisky.

Wine for me is fundamentally a part of a meal. I may have a part of a glass while cooking, or finish a glass after dinner, but it’s not something I just pull to drink on its own. The synergy of wine and food is something I appreciate and am fascinated by, but wine by itself is not as attractive to me.

Whisky gets even more restrictively pigeon-holed, I’m afraid. If I have some, it needs to be a nightcap, and then probably only one. I know some folks think it makes a terrific companion to food, but it doesn’t work for me. I’m also pretty weather sensitive when it comes to my whisky consumption – if there’s not a crisp snap in the air, I’m just not going to reach for a whisky.

Which brings me to beer. Beer is my all-occasion beverage. It works with food, and I have no qualms about consuming it by itself. It has the bonus of packing a lot of flavor into a package that I can drink all evening long. I truly get as much pleasure from a mouthful of good beer as I do from good wine or whisky, I just get a lot more mouthfuls! This is the clincher for me.  I used to drink more wine than anything else, but with life as crazy and wonderful and complete as it is, beer is a much better fit.

Now, I already diverge from the pack a bit by being a triple threat lover of beer, wine and whisky.  I diverge further from the pack by having a distinct preference for beers of very moderate strength.  As the title of the post indicates, I have always been a quality in quantity guy.  I’ve learned this about myself over the years, and trust me that some of those early years were full of some painfully disastrous experiments with quantity.

As I have grown up (matured is a bit too kind), I have given quite a bit of thought to this.  Once the realization hit that I would derive significantly more pleasure from two pints of 5% beer than one pint of 10% beer, I began to ween myself from “the chase”.  In the beer community, at least the online one, there is a great amount of discussion about certain beers (usually hard to get, expensive and high in alcohol) that garner high scores (I’ll save my rant on scoring something as subjective as taste for later).  The current top 100 on Beer Advocate is dominated by Quads, Russian Imperial Stout, Imperial/Double IPAs, and Barleywines.  Sure, there are a few other styles represented, but most are big beers (I counted a whopping 21 of 100 with an alcohol % less than 7%).

For a while, I was a part of “the chase” after these beers ,as I was after wine with “points” from certain critics.  Nowadays, I leave the chase to others.  I shared my thoughts on the subject in a post in Mike Sweeney’s fine Stlhops forum.   Over the past few years I’ve managed to direct the vast majority of my beer budget into beers that have more or less 5% alcohol or below.  I find myself happier, and have plenty of wonderful beers that I truly enjoy to keep my fridge, and now my kegerator, full.

While I’m content on my path, I can’t help but feel a twinge of sadness for those who rush past some really terrific “basic” beers on “the chase” for the latest and greatest double, Imperial, Bourbon barrel-aged, Brett-fermented star.  I’m glad those folks are thinking about what they’re drinking, and enjoying it, but I look forward to the time when we can discuss the subtlety and balance of a great Pilsener, Dunkel, or American Pale Ale with as much passion and appreciation as the “big” beers get.

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Posted in Beer, Prattle, Uncategorized

Atypique

Posted on May 8, 2008 | 2 Comments

It’s never been a finer time to be atypique in France. You’ll have some outstanding company. First it was the 2006 from La Gramiere. Now it’s the 2007 l’Ancien from Jean Paul Brun.

Quality wines from quality producers are being denied the ability to use their appellation of origin on the labels because they do not taste sufficiently similar to the ocean of wine being produced in their areas. For La Gramiere, that region is Côtes du Rhône, for M. Brun, it’s Beaujolais. Both of these appellations are huge, and home to myriad producers, many of whom turn out wine that is not particularly inspired. But, through the “wisdom” of the appellation d’origine contrôlée system (AOC), “not particularly inspired” becomes “typique” which is what wines must be, as judged by a tasting panel, to be allowed to say “Côtes du Rhône” or “Beaujolais” on the label.  Fail to be typique, and you have to label your wine as one being of the lesser levels of “quality”, Vin de Pays or Vins de Table.

While the denial of appellation doesn’t have much impact on geek sales, whether here or in Europe, which are more tuned in to producer or importer, rather than appellation, it can have a big impact on “normal” sales.  For M. Brun, over 5000 cases of his l’Ancien are impacted.  This is the bulk of his entire production for the year, and he will take a hit financially because of it (see the first May 8 posting by Brun’s U.S. importer Joe Dressner here).  For La Gramiere, it’s their entire 2006 production that is impacted.

Ultimately, France will likely go the way of Italy, where the Vino da Tavola has become a mark of prestige (albeit for using otherwise impermissible grapes more than anything), rather than an impediment to sales. I just can’t see the establishment opening their minds to quality producers who make something truly special from land where others only make something ordinary but still marketable due to name recognition for their AOC.  Hopefully, they will get it, but I fully expect them to trade on history until it is no longer able to support them where it matters most to them – their pocketbook.

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Posted in France, Uncategorized, Wine

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Moving on over

Posted on January 9, 2008 | Leave a comment

Just a quick move to WordPress.  Ahhh.

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Not dead yet.

Posted on November 27, 2007 | 4 Comments

Well, it has been an extraordinary ten days or so for me. I’m not done processing it, and don’t know for sure if I ever will be, and this will likely be the only mention of it ever on this blog, but I feel like I need to say something here.

I was released from the hospital on Sunday, after a lovely one week stay. Turns out what I thought was a bad asthma flare-up was a huge pulmonary embolism. I won’t go into the gory details here, but I was a millimeter (-re for my international readers . . .) or three from being a dead man. No warning signs, no symptoms, just a big blood clot in my pulmonary artery that extended into both lungs for no good reason. They’re not sure how long I was walking around with it, but I managed to set up for and cook a meal for 100 at church with it for certain. So close. Too close.

So, that’s why I’ve been quiet on the blog front. I should be back to drinking interesting stuff soon, and will resume the normal flow of the blog. Glad to be here. Thanks. Sorry for the brief detour.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Cellartracker

Posted on November 13, 2007 | 1 Comment

So you’ve started a nice little collection of wine. Would you like to have a nice utility to keep track of those bottles? How does one with incredibly easy entry of information, web and mobile access, almost half a million tasting notes from other wine lovers, and automatic valuation (very, very handy for insurance purposes, not just for braggin’) sound? What if it was also mostly free? Well, that’s cellartracker.com. It’s the product of ex-Microsoft program manager and wine lover Eric LeVine.

Entry is easy because 40,000+ other users have already entered their wines into the database. I have some pretty obscure stuff in my cellar, and can only remember having to wholly add two wines to the system. The system is quick and efficient, and I entered the 400+ bottles I had at the time I started using the program in a couple of hours. That’s a tiny fraction of the time needed to enter the data in either of the two previous programs I used.

The web access may be the handiest feature for me. You can get to your cellar from any computer (or handheld device), so you’re not stuck wondering whether you’ve already purchased a particular vintage or wine, or whether that bottle you think would match great with dinner is still in the cellar. The fact that you also have access to notes from other users on your wines can also help guide those decisions regarding what to drink for dinner (if you hang out on the wine discussion boards long enough, you’ll also be able to identify the authors of a lot of the notes which adds useful perspective).

I’ve been a very happy user for almost a year now, and can’t think of a better, easier way to keep track of your wine cellar. No affiliation, never met Eric, etc.

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