Blind Muscat's Cellarbook

Shooting Star Black Bubbles Lake County Syrah

One of winemaker Jed Stele’s little jokes, and quite tasty at that. The Aussies have an entire market segment devoted to sparkling Shiraz, in styles from dry to sweet, some of them quite well-crafted bottles but most of it for quaffing. And a fine quaff it is, once you get past the initial shock of red wine with bubbles in it—not pink wine, not elegant Brut Rosé Champagne like you’d drink on Valentine’s Day, but good old red wine, except chilled and fizzy.

Free Association Wine Notes

The Symposium for Professional Wine Writers, held every year for the last four at the Meadowood resort in the heart of the Napa Valley, brings writers, editors and other wine professionals from across the country (and this year, in one case, from across the Atlantic) together for three days of seminars, discussions and wretched excess. Topics come and go, but there is always one session devoted to writing tasting notes—starting, of course, with some tasting.

I used to think that the most irritating kind of wine tasting note is the endless, show-off list of descriptors, most of which have little to do with the actual enjoyment of the wine. Now, after this year’s tasting and scribbling session, I have a new pet peeve: notes that purport to describe wines by invoking utterly unrelated, non-wine experiences. 

The Two-Stop Napa Tour

Blind Muscat spent this past week in the Napa Valley, mostly at the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers (about which more later), plus a few side trips and tastings. It was all-Napa, all-the-time, quite a change of scenery for a hard-core Berkeley boy. The Symposium is co-sponsored by the Napa Valley Vintners Association and Meadowood, Napa’s semi-official luxury crash pad and watering hole, where the meetings were held; the only wines consumed over four days (and their number was many) were from Napa; and the only panel at the Symposium that focused on a wine issue—as opposed to a writing or career issue—was about the threat pending Federal regulations pose to the bankability of certain Napa place names.

So I was in full Napa mode when the Symposium let out and I headed off with another writer and his wife for a pair of appointments, one an elaborate lunch, the other a winery visit and tasting. Between the two stops, we saw the complete Napa picture, old and new, traditional and post-modern, rising star and struggling elder, half a mile and a world apart.

Say It Ain't So, Frank

When the press release filled my screen this morning, I thought it had to be a joke, but no, it’s true:  the Hitching Post in Santa Barbara, the scene of so much Merlot-bashing and related fun in the movie Sideways,  has announced that it will soon release three different Merlots.

Not only does this prove there is no God, and no justice; I’m wondering about gravity.