Category Archives: Wine

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Olema – Chardonnay 2014

  • Basic info: Olema, Chardonnay from Sonoma County, California, 2014.
  • Type: White wine
  • Price estimate: $14 (at Total Wine)
  • Look: Pale yellow. Very few legs, probably low alcohol wine.
  • Smell: Wine. Maybe a tiny bit of grapefruit. Bob got hints of vanilla.
  • Taste: Light mouthfeel. Bright. Good acid. Finish isn’t long and it is not a fruity wine. Has a touch of green apple in the taste and a fresh, clean, crisp taste.
  • Conclusions: It’s a decent wine and good for a summer day. For a Chardonnay, it is really good without the the heavy taste and feel. Would drink again.
  • Other notes: Bob tried this wine when we went to the Wine Walk in March. We  generally tried different wines at each station, then tasted each other’s wine, so we got a good mix. I liked this one at the Wine Walk and was really surprised that is was a Chardonnay. I have a general dislike of the heavy, oily, thick, oaky Chardonnays that dominate most wine lists, so I reflexively stay away from them. This one doesn’t have the heavy oil mouth feel. (As as aside, it is the same reason I just can’t eat foie gras, in addition to my general philosophical opposition to it.)
    • When Bob and I tasted this, we did so sitting on the back porch. He had his chartreuse mixed drink and I had a glass of wine. At one point while we were sitting there talking, I took a sip, a tiny sip, of his drink since he bragged how good it was. When I went back to the wine, it lost the bright acidity and became much more rounded. It was still light, but I got the hint of vanilla and a much smoother wine. For the rest of my glass, I had the rounder, softer wine to drink. It was a little weird to note such a different after one sip from his drink.
  • From the bottle: “Flavors of apple, citrus and a hint of toasty oak lead to a long, rich finish.” 14.2% alcohol by volume.

 

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Let’s Talk Wine

A few years ago now, Bob and I got hooked on a short series on Amazon or Netflix called James May’s Road Trip. I think the first season had a different name, but this was two seasons of James May, a car guy and definitely not a wine expert, traveling around France then California with Oz Clarke, very much a wine expert. It was a fun series and got me curious about wine, which I already liked drinking. It also got me to try new wines and return to drinking red wines.

But wine was wine and I didn’t think much of it. Fast forward a few years and one of my favorite podcasts, Slate Money did a whole wine episode that I just found fascinating and it made me want to learn about wine, not just drink it. They recently did a follow up episode, and from there I read Cork Dork, (and loved it btw – hilarious and smart, a tough combination but she nailed it) which is pretty much one woman’s obsessive journey to becoming a wine expert. I’m not going there. I’m not interested in devoting my life to wine, but it did get me thinking about how to remember wines I like, how do I describe wine and is there anything I can do to become better at tasting wine that will help me appreciate it more?

So I’m going to start posting my wine “adventures” here to keep a running record of the wines I’ve tried, what I thought of them and whether or not I liked them. This is similar to the recipes I post because I know, when I’m desperately looking for something to cook for dinner, I can go back, filter through recipes and see what I made before (with the recipe if I actually remembered to write it down) and come up with better ideas. And wine is pretty, so why not post it instead of keeping it in a notebook, which realistically I wouldn’t be able to read in six months since my handwriting is so bad.

I’m going to have Bob help – after all, he drinks the wines with me and he arguably has a slightly more sophisticated palate than I do (or different at the very least) and he gets a kick out of trying to discern smells and flavors in wine. I’m going to borrow from Wine Folly and *try* to keep an actual template so I can do two things – 1) remember the wines and what I thought of them and 2) see if I can develop my tasting skills and maybe, just maybe smell something other than “wine” in a glass of wine in a year or so.

 First post should be up in a day or so, and I’m hoping I can get one up at least once a week. No promises. May is already generally a busy month (end of fourth quarter, finals, end of year prep and graduation) but this year I have an internship for school in addition to class, so May will either be heavy on the wine or very light on the wine.

Cheers, Salute, Prost!