Wine As An Entertainment Industry

We've all read multiple articles about entertaining with wine -- how to do it, when to do it, how to make it work -- I've even written a couple of dozen of these articles over the years, each time almost hitting but inevitably missing the core point: wine connects specially with entertainment because wine itself is entertainment.

For the true wine lover, nothing's more entertaining than a bottle of wine.  What the wine maker does is always interesting - oak or no oak, ripe style or lean zippy style, sell now or age a year in the bottle? What the wine does on its own, creating and re-creating new flavors and aromas as the bottle ages, is obviously creative.  Finally, when you open the wine, pour it into a tall glass, and shine a spotlight on it, folks that's entertainment.

Wine, food, and the Fifty Shades of Grey soft core series (soon to be a major motion picture although Stanley Kubrick isn't around to direct it) were linked first in print and now forever in fact after last month's "Fifty Shades of Gris" tasting class.  Grey the character has narrow, kid-like tastes -- mainstream Champagne, lemony Sauvignon Blanc -- plus he has a gigantic bag of money, youth, and good looks, which I guess is what makes it fiction.

We tasted a trio of literally gray wines -- Pinot Gris / Grigio translates as the gray Pinot because the grapes are somewhere between white and red / black in color -- that illustrated the wide range of styles one grape can achieve in two different parts of the world.

2011 Willamette Valley Vineyards Pinot Gris (Oregon, about $15)
www.WVV.com
If you can't remember how to pronounce it, just remember this happy little rhyme: "It's Willamette, dammit!" Oregon is already making supremely successful Pinot Noir, so it's no surprise other members of the Pinot family are going to feel at home.  I loved the texture of this wine: not quite buttery, but rich and round and nicely oily in a way the word oily just doesn't communicate.

2011 King Estate Pinot Gris (Oregon, about $17)
www.KingEstate.com
Even if your family name happens to be King, you're making a statement when you use it on a wine label.  The name promises much, and the wine has been delivering for decades.  Their Pinot Noir is deservedly famous and kind of hard to find here in the northeast.  This Pinot Gris is crisp and balanced with great concentrated white fruit juice flavors like melon and pear.  Delicious with all kinds of seafood.

2011 Case Sugan Pinot Grigio (Friuli, northeast Italy, about $18)
www.CaseSugan.com
One of the challenges about Pinot Grigio -- Italian Pinot Grigio especially -- is that it comes in so many different styles.  On the one hand, you can have stereotypic  lean, crisp, almost watery Pinot Grigio.  On the other hand, you can have this Pinot Grigio that's full of flavor and good texture and elaborate flavors.  Friuli in northeast Italy specializes in white wine, and Case Sugan is a prime example of the best this grape can be, all for under $20 a bottle.

Gris With Envy

Words explain everything

You don't have to speak a dozen different languages to find your way around wine, but if you did, it sure would come in handy.

Start counting the different languages represented in the typical wine shop: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Flemish, Czech, Lebanese, Georgian, and more.  Let's stop before we even got to the Celtic / Gaelic labels in the whiskey section or start debating whether American English is even the same thing as Australian English.

Take last night's favorite Italian white, 2011 Colterenzio "Schreckbichl" Pinot Grigio (about $15), with its Italian / German front label and Italian / English back label, for instance.

Colterenzio -- col means hill, and Terenzio / Terrence is someone's name -- would be called Terrence Hill Winery in the USA.  And Schreckbichl -- the name of the vineyard that provides the grapes -- translates roughly Shrieking Point, a tribute to the treacherous steep valleys and twisting roads in northern Alpine Italy.  We might call a vineyard like this Dangerville or Geronimo Drop.  On the back label, one sentence in English explains the wine, mentioning sun-blessed hills, the Ice Age, and great finesse.

In spite of themselves, wine labels are giving us a lot of information -- so much sometimes they have to use three languages at once -- if only we can find some way to understand them.

SPECIAL OFFER: Register for Fifty Shades Of Gris (Class + Small Plates) Wed. Jan. 23 6:30-8:30pm with promo code alltiedup and take $25 off.

We'll taste a range of wines in this class derived from the soft-core soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture trilogy, from Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume - tart and tangy Sauvignon Blanc-based whites from northern France - to Pinot Gris from Oregon and finally Barossa Shiraz.  Somewhere in the line-up, I'm going to work in a "vin gris" which we call rose; in the wine world, grey wine is actually pink.

Teacher: Jonathon Alsop

The Fine Print - Q.P.R. - Quality Price Ratio

Last night's Q.P.R. class - essentially an opportunity for me to spend the evening with all my favorite wines around $10 - confirmed something we've known for a long time: you have to read the fine print. On the front of the bottle, this tasty 2011 Cocobon "Red" (about $8 at Trader Joe's) doesn't really give you too much.  The "coco" part of the name promises yummy chocolate, and "bon" must mean it's good, so the label marketing message is tight, if a little general.

But flip the bottle around, and that's where you learn what makes this smooth rich red so fragrant and flavorful.  Beneath a wine maker's message in teeny tiny type is the signature of Georgetta Dane, former perfumist, now Big House wine maker, and the taste and talent behind a couple of my favorite reds from Concannon Vineyard.

WINE SHOPPING TIP: You've got a smart phone, so let it do the work.  Download a UPC / QR code scanner app to get instant info, but remember to Google the wine maker's name, if available.