Tasting Note: 2010 Lammershoek Syrah LAM

I'll post another wine that I tasted some time ago. You'll see that the tasting notes I publish from wines that were  tasted some time ago will have a high average score. This is because it's more fun to show you guys wines that are good.

Tasting note for the 2010 Lammershoek Syrah LAM:
Nice nose with dark berries and strawberries. Balanced, with tastes of dark berries and pepper. Finishes with cherries. Medium long finish, nice acidity and good balance. Lacks some depth. 90 points

When it comes to New World wines I tend to like the ones that are more like the Old World wines. The 2010 Lammershoek Syrah LAM is not a fruit bomb and has 13.5% alcohol. It is balanced and elegant. It's got more the characteristics of a Syrah from Northern Rhone than the wines you usually find from South Africa or Australia. In addition to that, it is cheap. This is a great wine for everyday drinking.

Check it out on:
Wine-Searcher
Wineanorak

Investing in wine - for dummies

I am not a wine expert, but I know a thing or two about investing. I'll try to give my 2 cents worth of advice when it comes to investing in fine wine as a financial investment, not an investment in future drinking.

The basics of investing in wine is like all other investments, it all comes down to supply and demand.  

Supply side:
The great thing about wine is that the supply side is easy to understand and it is always decreasing. It is decreasing because when you look at a wine the relevant thing to look at is a specific wine from a specific vintage. The supply of this wine will always be decreasing since there will always be bottles of the wine consumed.

Demand side:
The demand for wine is close to impossible to understand. I will start by listing what I think are the major drivers for fine wine demand:

• Scores: What scores the major wine critics gives the specific wine in the specific vintage. The major critics are Robert Parker, Allan Meadows, Jancis Robins and Stephen Tanzer
• The Economy: Wine is a luxury goods, and as for all goods, the demand is alway more volatile for luxury goods. It's worth mentioning that fine wine is a global market. Ecnomical growth in Asia and South America can balance out economical down turns in Europe and the US
• Speculation: 
• Stiglitz has a simple, but to my understanding, very accurate definition of when you have a bubble. "the basic intuition is straightforward: if the reason that the price is high today is only because investors believe that the selling price will be high tomorrow-when
  "fundamental" factors do not seem to justify such a price-then a bubble exists."
• It is not a good time to invest in fine wine when you hear your friends, who are not experts in fine wine and the drivers behind the prices of fine wine, say that investing in wine is a good idea

Why I do not invest in wine for financial purposes:

• I do not have enough knowledge about wine
• I do not have enough knowledge about the economical future of Asia and South America to understand whether the growth here will outway the down turn in European and American economies
• I do believe that there might be tendencies indicating a bubble
• I do not have the perfect storage facility for my wines.  If you don't the wine will be worth nothing
• Fakes: One factor that I haven't mentioned is the excistence of fake wines. The Rudy Kurniwan case is a great example of this.

A great wine at a great price: 2009 Ridge Estate Cabernet Sauvignon

I've wanted to try a wine from Ridge Estate for a long time. I stopped by my local wine store today and saw they had the 2009 Ridge Estate Cabernet Sauvignon and had to buy it to see if  it's worth buying some more. This wine is not there premium Cab Sauv wine, that is the Monte Bello. This wine was made from 77% cabernet sauvignon with 23% merlot.

Tasting note:
Nice, dark red colour.
Fruit driven nose with cherry, blackcurrants, caramel and some candy. I also pick up some oak, but it's far for dominant. Great nose.
On the palate I get ripe cherries and I do believe it is a caramel flavour. Hard to describe. The oak is balanced. Firm tannins on the back end. Good length.
This is not an overoaked fruit bomb. It is full bodied, but the wine is precise and cuts the crap. It has a nice sour taste that keeps this wine from being to ripe. 93 points

Wow, this is a great wine. It is perfectly sane to drink this now if you enjoy primary fruit flavours, but to me it seems to have the balance and the tannins to last a decade or more.

I am definetly going to buy some bottles of the 2009 Ridge Estate Cabernet Sauvignon.

Top 10 wines in my cellar ranked by the cellartracker community score

This is absolutely not a post meant for bragging about my wine cellar. As you will see from the list, it is not even close to being anything to brag about. I just thought it would be interesting to show what kind of wines I have now, and how this will develop once I get more experienced and find out more about my preferences.

Here is my top 10 list as of now:

There are a few things that hit me when I look at this list:
1) There are so many young wines that will take ages before they hit their optimal drinking window. I need to buy more older wine.
2) I need to buy more Burgundy and Bordeaux. The reason why I haven't bought much wine from these areas is because of the prices. But I realize now that it's more about quality than quantity.
3) Some of these wines are total bombs. The Janasse CdP XXL is 17% alcohol or something like that. I bought this wine at the beginning of my wine interest era. Now that I've had some wines, I'm pretty sure that this wine is never going to be a great wine for my palate.

I am looking forward to updating this list in a year and see how it has developed. Hopefully there are some new wines on the list.

Would be great if some of you would post your top 10 in the comment section below.

2004 Tahbilk Shiraz

I'll be posting tasting notes on some of the wines I've tasted earlier. This is a wine I bought some bottles of. It was on sale and I've heard good things about it. It also helped that it was 2004. Always fun to be able to by wine with some age on it already.

Tasting note for the 2004 Tahbilk Shiraz :
Medium red coulour. Red, soure berries on the nose. Good balance on the palate with pepper and blackcurrant. Good weight and OK length. 89 points

The 2004 Tahbilk Shiraz is not an over-the-top shiraz, as many of the wines from Australia are. This has a medium body and not too high alcohol percentage. This wine is probably at it's peak right now, but I'm going to drink my last bottles over a year or two to see what happens.

It's hard to find this vintage of the wine in stores, but if you find a Tahbilk Shiraz from an other vintage it would be a fun wine to check out.



Check it out on:
Wine-Searcher
Crackawines

2011 Weingut Robert Weil Riesling Spätlese

We had sushi on friday. I've read many recommendations for the combo of sushi and riesling spatlese so I thought this was a good day to try it. Haven't had much spatlese before so I was excited to try it out. Started easy with a basic spatlese from Weil.

Tasting note for the 2011 Weingut Robert Weil Riesling Spätlese:
The nose is dominated by honey, but also has a dash of lime. The honey dominates on the palate as well. I also get some oranges and some lime. Ok acidity on the back end. Decent length and ok balance. 87 points

The wine doesn't blow me away. It is not very complex, quite one dimentional actually, but it matches the sushi very well. Given the nice price of this wine, I do think it has a pretty good qpr.

Weingut Robert Weil is a producer located in the Rhengau region in Germany. His top cuvees are very sought after. The wine I had is a standard spatlese whith a very nice price.



Check it out on Wine-Searcher

Buying wine is like using drugs (I think)

No, I have never used drugs, but I've heard it's easy to get addicted. The same goes for buying wine. I haven't been a wine geek for more than a year. I actually went from not interested in wine to wine geek in one day I think. But during this first year there haven't been many days where I haven't found a new wine I would like to buy.

As a newbie in the game I feel like there are so many great vintages out right now. I feel like it is a "once in a lifetime" oppurtunity. I just can't not buy wines now and regret it for the rest of my life, beceause there is no telling when the next great vintage will be.

I write down all the wines I want to buy in a spreadsheet. Currently I have 45 wines on the list. 45 wines with an average cost of aproximately $50 and an average of 4 bottles per wine makes the cost of that list $ 9,000. When your in your late twenties, that is a substantial amount of $.

Maybe it would be cheaper to start using drugs instead?

2010 Hubert Lamy Saint-Aubin 1er Cru En Remilly

I haven't had a lot of white Burgs yet, mainly because I love Rieslings but also because the dry Rieslings are way cheaper than the wines from Burgundy. That said, some of the bottles I've had, have been very good. I need to invest more in this category.

I had this Hubert Lamy wine 3-4 weeks ago:
Sitrus and crushed stones on the nose. Good acidity and crispness on the palate with taste of sitrus, crushed stones and honeydew melon. Gains some weight in the finish with more time in the glass..The minerality in this wine really stands out. 91 points

Hubert Lamy isn't one of the most prominent producers in Burgundy and Saint-Aubin is, as I understad it, a well known value play for white Burgs. This wine delivers. I am sure this easily can be put in the cellar for a few years, but it's actually drinking nicely already.

Check it out on:
Wine-Searcher
Berry Bros & Rudd

2009 Domaine Pavelot (Jean-Marc et Hugues) Savigny-lès-Beaune 1er Cru Aux Gravains

It's tough to be a wine rookie. Every day i read about wines that I must buy or the vintage of the century. I don't know if it's just luck that I got into wine exactly at the time where all vintages from the major European wine countries are great, or if this is just how the wine industry works; the next vintage is always the wine of the century?

So, even though I'm new in the game, it's been impossible to not hear/read all the hype about the red 09's and 10's from Burgundy. Until now, I haven't been drinking a lot of red Burgs, but recently I've bought some village and premier cru wines from both 09 and 10. I want to taste some of them before they go to sleep and wake up again in 5-10 years (I don't have the experience with Burgs going to sleep and getting tight, but I've read about it so I guess it's true).

The tasting note:
Strawberries, cherries and some alcohol on the nose. The strawberries and cherries are also found on the palate. Full bodied. Ends with a nice acidity, cherries and a fist of dirt. Nicely balanced wine. 91 points

This is probably not a wine for the hardcore burgundy fans. It's ripe, which i guess is because 09 was a warm vintage, but I like it. It's got lots of fruit. Again, as I write this, I feel that I scored this wine a bit too high. It's good, but it lack a bit complexity and finesse. If I'd score it again i would probably be more 89-90 points.

Check it out on:
Wine-Searcher
Woodland Hills Wine Company

2007 Robert Mondavi Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley

Leather and blueberry pie on the nose. Follows up with chocolate, blueberries, pencil and oak on the palate. OK length with soft tannins. Medium to full body, but lacks some acidity to balance it completely. The oak is at this stage not well enough integrated. 89 points

When I look back at this note and remember the wine I feel that I overscored the wine. It's not a wine that rocks my palate. A bit too oaky and lacking the acidity to balance the wine, but there were some delicious fruit flavours there that kindof got me excited. I have 2 more bottles in the cellar. I am probably going to sit on those for a couple of years to see if the oak integrates a bit more, but I do not believe that this wine ever will be amazing.



 Check it out on:
Wine-Searcher
Wine.com

2010 Kühling-Gillot Qvinterra Riesling Trocken

My first tasting note. I'll give each wine I taste a score based on the Parker scale. There is no reason why anyone should actually pay attention to my scores because as I've said, I know very little about wine so far.
That said, here we go:

Tasting note for the 2010 Kühling-Gillot Qvinterra Riesling Trocken:
On the nose I get green apples and tropical fruit. On the palate there is some apples and orange zest. Minerals and nice acidity on the finish. Towards the end of the finish I pick up some of the orange zest that I also got on the nose. Goog length. Lacks some complexity, but it's really a good example of a basic riesling trocken. 88 points

I had this wine 7-10 months ago as well. Back then I thought the acidity was a bit too much. This time I love the acidity. I do actually think that the wine's acidity has  settled down a bit since last time I had this, but it is also sure that I love this type of acidity in Rieslings way more now than back then.

Check it out on Wine-Searcher

The Rookie Starts Blogging About Wine

I am nowhere even close to being a wine expert. I am just an amateur who got into wine about a year ago. Since then I've tried to drink more wine than before, but more importantly, I've tried to taste wines in a way that I've never done before. I will try to publish some of my notes on the wines I drink on this blog, and hopefully there will be 1 or 2 people out there who reads it.

Why would I do this when I know I have zero knowledge on wine? Do I have anything to tell the world that it doesn't know already? Nope. I'm just hoping that some will miraculously finds this blog and comment on how I write my notes and how I describe wine, because I want to learn more.

So sit back and enjoy the show - cause my blogging days are about to start!