Wine Seminar

[BEEBEEP]

My local wine shop had a seminar tonight hosted by J. Lohr winery. I had a ball, and got to taste a chardonnays (river stone I think), a valdiguie’ (wildflower) (this would be a perfect “first red” for someone wanting to get started on red’s), a merlot, two cab’s (seven oaks and hilltop) and a zin (old vine).

I’ve never had so many different wines in succession that I liked so much, (usually if I try six wines there’s at least one or two “strikes” in the batch). I don’t even like zin’s, and I liked this one.

All the wines except the zin were “estate” wines, but what really got my attention was how different the two cab’s were. The Seven Oaks cab is from one vineyard and aged in American oak, the Hilltop cab is from another vinyard and aged in French oak. These are VERRY different wines, but I REALLY enjoyed both.

Hopefully someone will find this info useful [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/biggrin.gif[/img]

[BEEBEEP]

PS:
There was a petite syrah in there too, which I usually don’t like, but I enjoyed that as well.

[winoweenie]

Hidie there double B. Lohr has been a P/Q favorite of this motley crew for years. VERY solid performer that puts out the goods almost every year. WW

[wondersofwine]

Good way to learn about which wines you like. I'm going to a Saturday tasting with Andrew Will wines. I read that he is abandoning making single-vineyard cabernet sauvignons in the future and will concentrate on Bordeaux-style blends. If I really love the cabernets, I should buy up for the future.

[stevebody]

Whoa, there pardner! I just spoke to Chris Camarda this past week and he said he wasn't abandoning single-vineyard Cabs at all but IS going to delve more deeply into blends. He's acquiring some vineyard land of his own and will, eventually, make Cabs out of his own stock, which he thinks is more apporpriate. The Cabs will still be around, just not in such variety.

[wondersofwine]

That's good news I guess. I liked the Seven Hills Cabernet best of those we tasted. The wine shop had run out of Sorella (a blended wine I believe) before I got there, but I did try the Champoux blend. I did have a chance to chat with Chris about some of his winemaking techniques (such as he abandoned use of native yeasts because he wasn't happy with the results, is currently using manual punchdown of the grapes in open tanks but would like to go to closed tanks with a pumping-over technique, made five barrels of pinot noir).

[This message has been edited by wondersofwine (edited 04-28-2003).]