Dan's Pick of the Week, Finski

To quote the immortal words of my favorite Charlie Brown TV special, 'Christmastime is here, happiness and cheer.'

Actually, it isn't even Halloween yet, but you'd never know it by the beer now rolling in from the best craft brewers. Arriving yesterday was The Mad Elf from Pennsylvania brewer Troegs. It's a rich, tasty concoction of Belgian yeast, chocolate malt, honey and cherries. At 11% alcohol, it'll warm you up on those cold winter nights, and make for a great atmosphere at your holiday parties.

Next week will see the arrivals of Christmas Ale from everybody's favorite Ohio brewer Great Lakes. Colorado's Breckenridge Brewery will also release its Christmas beer in the next couple of weeks. Both of these are 'winter warmer' styles brewed with some holiday baking spice (like nutmeg and cinnamon).

Best start celebrating Christmas now, because by the time you're into the holiday swing, these beers will be long gone. Annoying, I know, but you'll just have to take one for the team and drink them now.

Dan's pick of the week, intervallo di quattro

Okay...I'm breaking my rule for this one. I think I'd typed before that these would not be things from that week's tasting. This one is. It's such a good deal, though, I had to get the word out.

This week we have Avulisi, a Nero d'Avola from highly respected producer Feudo di Santa Tresa. Nero is the great black grape of Sicily, producing a relatively full-bodied but elegant wine full of black fruit and earthy complexity. This one is a 2003, so it's a nice opportunity to experience a wine with a little age on it. This one has lots of these secondary age characteristics like cedar, leather, raisin and black olive.

The best part is that this is a vintage closeout. It's $12 off until it's gone!

Justifiable excitement

Next week's tastings are going to be...wait for it...LEGENDARY!

We're going to do a little sampling of wines from Justin, the preeminent Paso Robles producer. The real attraction of this one will be a couple of Bordeaux-styled blends. Justin is deservedly famous for 'Isosceles', a cab-based blend modeled after the great 'left bank' wines of the Margaux and Pauillac AOC's. In the last few vintages, however, they've also been producing a brilliant if less well known counterpoint to that monumental bottling.

You see, on what is known as the 'right bank' of Bordeaux, across the Rive Gironde, there is virtually no cabernet sauvignon grown due to soil conditions. There, in the noble wines of Pomerol and St. Emilion, among others, merlot and cabernet franc comprise the ruling class. Justin grows spectacular cab franc in their estate vineyard, and saw an opportunity to produce a rare-in-California 'right bank' styled blend. The yin to Isosceles yang, it's a blend of 65% cab franc and 35% merlot. The wine, called 'Justification', is a knockout, and we're the only shop in Dayton with it. It's being brought in especially for this tasting, in very limited quantities.

We'll taste them both next Wednesday from 5-8 and Saturday from 3-6. I'm excited. Hope to see a good crowd to enjoy these rare treats, but if not...well, it's more for me!

Opportunity knocks for the negociant

Who said the economy is all bad?

Thanks to the financial situation of most wine consumers and, in turn, retailers, wholesalers, brokers and wineries, there is a lot of unsold wine and, more to the point, unsold fruit out there in wine country. This is a huge opportunity for enterprising winemakers to find tremendous quality grapes at ridiculous prices.

The upshot, of course, is lower prices for quality wine.

This week, we tasted wines from Sean Minor, a young winemaker who has connections at some of the top vineyard sites in California thanks to his years of work at BV. He started an eponymous label a few years back with an eye toward producing Saturday night quality wine at Tuesday night pricing. He has long term contracts at wonderful vineyards for half of the fruit that he secures every year. The other half he plays the spot market, buying up that orphaned bulk fruit that needs a good home. The contract blocks are a way to hedge against the danger of negociant activity, because it guarantees a certain level of quality. On the flipside, playing the spot market for the rest brings the price of the whole down significantly.

Anyway, the goals have been met. Actually, they've been surpassed at a trot. The wines are great. Our customers especially seemed to enjoy the Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, but all five wines are really quite something.

Dan's Pick of the Week, intervalle de trois

Orin Swift, the hyper-popular cult winery that in a few short vintages has become a winemaking superstar, has a new wine. It's called Abstract, and its a sort of Rhone-styled blend of Grenache, Petite Sirah and Syrah. It has a really cool label, too.

The wines attributes are surprisingly tilted to the black fruit side of the scale. Typically, I would expect a blend like this to have lots of cool blue-toned fruit with a kind of wild brambly texture, but this one has some sour blackberry and some black cherry and currant thrown in. If I had to guess, I'd say that the Syrah (which I believe to have the least presence in the blend, but the actual numbers are nowhere to be found) probably comes from a relatively warm area and is thus driving the wine towards a slightly darker (and higher alcohol; note the 15.7% this bad boy sports, despite the lack of heat on the palate) place than the high-toned world that Grenache usually introduces.

Whatever the case, this stuff is delicious now and can probably stand a couple of years of cellaring. It's relatively scarce this year, but that situation should improve in subsequent vintages. I expect this to become as sought after as the winery's greatest hit, The Prisoner.

To top it all off, Abstract is a great bargain. It's the least expensive wine ever made by Orin Swift Cellars' winemaker Dave Phinney.

The alternative varietal rant

We tasted a Muller Thurgau this week. It was actually well-received, selling more than any other bottle on the tasting. I got a little bit annoyed over one recurring question. 'Is it like (insert common white varietal here)?'

My answer was generally something along the lines of, 'It's like Muller Thurgau.'

Surprisingly (yeah, right), this was an extraordinarily dissatisfying answer for most inquirers.

But aren't we at a wine tasting to, you know, taste wine? Isn't the point to try to expand our horizons a little? To try something new and find that it is the best (or worst, or something in between) wine you've ever experienced?

/end rant

Dan's Pick of the Week, descanso dos

So I'm looking around the shop for this week's object of desire.

Is it this? Is it that? The other, per chance?

No, there's only one possible answer this week. It arrived late yesterday and was sitting here waiting for me like a package under the Christmas tree when I strolled in a casual 10 minutes after 10 am (meh...it's Friday).

It's beer. The beer, for some. Founders Breakfast Stout. It's virtues are legendary. It's brewed with coffee, oatmeal and chocolate. Is it coffee cake? No, but you might be tempted to crack one the next time you have a cinnamon roll at 7:30 in the morning. Founder's believes this to be 'the consummate coffee-lover's beer'. Who amongst us can argue with such perfect reasoning?

By the way, it's pretty scarce. I'm trying to limit myself to 2 4-packs. If you don't come claim it soon, though, I may end up with 2 cases.

Dan's Pick of the Week, interval 1

I've been so neglectful.

I hope this post acts as the necessary springboard to some actual, you know, blogging on this blog. I'll try to get a post up once a week that will highlight a wine (or three) or beer (or...you get it) in the shop. It will always be something that we aren't pouring during our weekly tasting, but aside from that small exception, it could be anything.

So, without further ado, we'll kick it off with something a few of our regulars (as well as some irregulars) have been chomping at the bit to get their hands on...

Back in the shop for the first time in almost a year is a selection of wines from Mollydooker, the Australian winery famous for some of the most luscious, fruit-filled wines on the planet. The wines are extremely limited, so I get a small allocation each year. When the wines are gone from the shop, that's it. I can't order any more. Some years, there are only a couple of wines available, while in others I can get a little bit of each wine they make. Last year was especially tough, with only two bottlings from the release of the 2008 red wines available. 2009 was an easier vintage for the Mollydooker team, so we were able to secure a broader range of their wines, including a couple cases of one cult object that wasn't produced the previous year.

These are not wines for those of you who crave small scale, elegance, refinement and structure. These are pure, hedonistic expressions of fruit. Here they are:

Cabernet Sauvignon, "The Maitre

D' ", $28 A classic Aussie Cab with pure varietal aromas and a plush, rich, fruit-driven palate. (Limited.)

Shiraz, "The Boxer", $28 Explosive and mouthfilling. This is the archetypal Australian Shiraz, loaded with blue fruit, black pepper and tar.

(Extremely limited.)

Shiraz, "Blue Eyed Boy", $50 The

aforementioned cult object. Robert

Parker's Wine Advocate has raved about this wine for years. The last two vintages (the most recent tasted) have been granted "classic" status with ratings of 96 points out of 100 for the 2006 and 95 points for the 2007. This is a more balanced wine than "The Boxer", adding an extremely fine-grained structure to the typical Aussie hedonism. This is delicious now, but is the one wine here that is truly age-worthy. (Limited.)

The Dayton Wine Trail, version 3.0

The (in)famous tour of the Miami Valley's finest wine tasting destinations is back and better than ever.

Saturday, October 9 will welcome the third installment in our little venture. This time Bruning's Wine Cellar and Bella Vino Wine Merchant & Bar will be the destinations. For a $25 ticket, you'll get a flight of 5 wines to taste at each establishment, as well as transportation between the the shops. I'm pouring a kind of grab bag of Pacific Northwest wines. Tickets can be purchased now at Bruning's or Bella Vino.

You will have the option to start your day at either shop. Tours will leave from Bruning's at 2 PM and 3:30 PM, while Bella Vino will have start times of 2:45 and 4:15. We'll start pouring at 1 PM for those of you who want to do the 2 o'clock tour, so you can enjoy your flight here and then get on the bus.

It should be a great day of fun and wine. Hope to see you there!