Good Morning!

It’s the Friday before Thanksgiving and I have received dozens of emails asking me what wine do I suggest for everyone, well…it kinda depends on several factors.

First factor and my first rule of wine…drink what you like, your palate is all about you, so if you like a certain wine, go for it. If you make something very nontraditional for Thanksgiving you might want a wine I would never have thought about.

Second most ask question is how much wine should I plan on each person drinking so I can figure out how much to buy…great question and answer again is well..it kinda depends on several factors. Are they normally wine drinkers, how long will they be staying there and do you drink more during the holidays?

Next question I seem to get a lot of is do I get different wines for different courses, the answer again is well…it kinda depends on several factors as well.

Let me walk you though my thought process on this whole Thanksgiving wine thing and maybe I will help a little.

We fly to my in-laws every year for Thanksgiving. They live just outside of Palm Springs, CA and honestly only myself and my step son drink any wine. Of the 20 plus folks that will be there, I will be ask to bring wine and what they tell me each year, is next year can you bring some sweet wine. First year, they were all disapointed in my selections. The first year, I brought four bottles of wine, all top dollar and they included Burgundy from France, Riesling from Germany and 2 California wines, a bottle of Merry Edwards Pinot Noir and a bottle of Ceago Sauvignon Blanc. This was a wasted effort for the crowd at Grandma’s house.

What they wanted was the cloying sweet really bright red wines they like once a year. So the next year, I brought some sparkling sweet white wines, they drank a little bit, but again they said they wanted “sweeter” wines. Last year, I showed up with the syrupy sweet bright pink stuff and they LOVED it. So listen to what they say when you are buying for others. The wine I prefer with Thanksgiving will look something like this….

Start out with some great pink bubbles! If Thanksgiving were to be held at my place, I would be severing all the traditional things, turkey, sage stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, scalloped corn and we would have pumpkin pie for dessert. So when folks arrived I would serve some Chandon, Mumm or Gloria Ferrer and let the bubbles help them build their hunger.

Next, I would open both a Pinot Noir and a Riesling and have them out for everyone to choose whatever they want. These two grapes seem to be the most food friendly wines when it comes to Thanksgiving day variety around the table. Then for dessert I would break out some port and I’d skip the pie until round two of eating!

This is just my way to enjoy what I like during this food driven holiday. This side of the family gets together once a year and it really is all about my step-son seeing his grandparents and cousins and letting him connect. I have yet to find the perfect wine that goes with his grandma’s stove top stuffing but since I am really the only one who will be drinking it, I will get what I like and also pick up a jug of the red, sweet stuff, for the rest of them while I sip on a Pinot Noir from Sonoma County during the day.

As for how much wine to buy per guest, it is a good rule to use the 2 glass per guest rule, but if you are like me, I tend to have an extra glass or two when I get around family. We are there all day and honestly, it keeps me relaxed when the football game is blaring and little kids are flinging themselves around when a semi professional wrestling match breaks out in the living room.

I love this holiday more than I can say, it is all about food and family. No gifts are needed, no expectations just food and family and I love watching my step-son reconnect with his uncles and grandparents. There is not a “trick” to picking wine for the big day, find what you like and if you are buying for others, well, listen to what they want and go find it!

Have a great weekend and prep for next weeks’ start of the holiday season!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi

Good Morning!

Today is a big day in the wine world…It’s Beaujolais Nouveau Day! What the heck is that? Beaujolais is a wine from France made from the Gamay grape and the word Nouveau is french and it means “new” loosely translated to English. So it is new wine made of Gamay grapes day! There is also a regular Beaujolais, the bottle will say Nouveau if it is the young wine.

Why is this important? Well, I am not sure how important it is, but it started 100’s and some say 1000’s of years ago. This celebration started to celebrate a successful harvest. These Gamay grapes were picked about 6-8 weeks ago, and probably finished fermenting about 2 or so weeks ago! So this is a very young, juicy, fruity wine. This wine is released world wide every year on the 3rd Thursday of November and it is wildly popular with Thanksgiving dinners here in the United States.

The Gamay grape is a cousin to Pinot Noir and it is thin skinned and the wine will be a medium-light bodied wine. This wine in some circles is very welcomed and others are not so found of it. One famous wine educator said it tastes like cookie dough…I am not so sure that is a great description, but I have this wine many times and found it to be a light, fresh and very young wine. It has not seen anytime in aging, so it is very purple in color and tastes like fruit (raspberries and plums), but smells like figs and pears but it’s known for the banana smell you get when you first open the bottle.

Why is this wine so popular in the states? Well, it is on every end cap at every grocery store in November until about the first of the year and the labels are fun and though, many people have no clue how to say it correctly, they like the price point of the wine as well, about $10-15. This young wine is loved with Thanksgiving and I think that is because it is young and there are so many different flavors happening on your table, like turkey, sweet potatoes, cranberries, richness in gravy and sage in the stuffing, I think this young flexible wine kinda holds it’s own with the buffet of flavors.

When looking for a Beaujolais Nouveau, look for a label with lots of colorful flowers and the name Georges Duboeuf, these wines will be almost everywhere. When I lived in Indianapolis there was a wine store there, that would have a skydiver jump out of a plane with the first delivery of Beaujolais Nouveau each year…it was kinda cool to watch. This wine needs to be drank within a few months of buying it, but regular Beaujolais can age for quite awhile and gain some very positive profile flavors. This wine should be served chilled about 55 degrees and this is an easy drinking wine, so get one than one bottle, if you have family or friends joining you!

I wanted to share the info about Beaujolais Nouveau wine and the special day it has and tomorrow I will discuss what wines I am taking to my in-laws this year! It might surprise you!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi

Good Morning!

Today I decided to share some photos of amazing meals I have had while traveling over the past 6 weeks. These places do things with food that are amazing! I will talk more about the wine tomorrow!

Good Morning,

I am still recovering from this harvest and the fermentation is moving along perfectly, but I wanted to share my thoughts and the first thought about making wine in the 2011 harvest is the song from the movie 8 Mile by Eminem, You know the beat, that thumping, heart pounding and the tension he creates with his lyrics to “Lose Yourself”. The line, You only got one shot…that resonated through my head and heart.

When I made wine as a hobby, I had no pressure to get everything perfect, just learn and have fun and in the end at least I will have wine for myself and my friends. But now this is my livelihood, I want to be more focused and serious but you really just have one time to do this right…so in some ways a winemaker might feel like Santa Claus, he makes it look like one night’s work a year. But really you spend the year and you learn, work, adjust, watch, prepare all year to create the best environment for a great harvest and then crush and press and the list goes on in the process.

I try to never let myself feel all tense about anything, when I act scared or nervous I do not make as good of a decision maker as I do when I am fearless. So this being my second harvest (not including my apprenticeship with Lapostolle wines in Chile last year), I learned so much from last harvest, but this vintage is very different from 2010. I purchased grapes from 2 awesome growers and I watched and watched weather reports and received updates all spring and summer long.

Once I started watching the sugar levels in the grapes to determine when we would pick the grapes, I swear the Eminem song kept playing in my head…that thumping, that tension was building and I knew when the grapes hit the range of Brix (sugar level measuring standard) I would only have a few days to make it all happen. It is really easy to prepare all the rest of the”stuff”, the tanks, barrels, manpower, resources, that is easy, but deciding when to pick is crazy exciting. I compare it to putting $1000 on red on a table in Vegas and letting someone else spin and you wait to see if it hits.

You can do lots of research but until you have some “game time” experience I am not sure you ever relax. I was talking to a guy and he said, I have been a winemaker for 30 years and you would think I felt good about when to pick, but some years, certain grapes are easy to determine, some years you question yourself, he said until years later and you taste the wine, well, that’s when you will know if you should have waited or if the acid or balance could or should have been different. His words made me feel better in some ways, but in other ways, his words just gave me chest pains. He said, I have only done this 30 times, every year brings new circumstances.

Well, I am really proud of how the harvest went and the choices I made, I am excited to see how these wines develop and I will remind myself that when all is said in done, I will be making a wine that is for myself and my friends to enjoy! I am just going to relax and enjoy the process and when all is said and done, I will prepare more next year, I will learn more over this next year and each year I hope to take a deep breath and love all my wines just like my kids!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi

Good Morning!

I am glad to say, the last 2 weeks might have been some of the craziest and most inspiring weeks of my life. We have just finished the second harvest of my wines TJR Select. Currently, both my white wine “Patio” and my red blend “Fireplace” are fermenting and aging and in about a year will be ready to bottle. The first vintage of TJR Select is aging and it looks like the 2010 vintage should be in bottles about March or April of 2011.

So you know how my 2010 wines came to life here is a little back story….I found a vineyard in Lake County, California who had exceptional Sauvignon Blanc grapes and I purchased 6 tons and then the grapes were taken to a custom crush facility and then we pressed the grapes and added a little yeast and put the juice into stainless steel tanks so the fermentation can start. With my red blend which is a Cabernet Sauvignon (70%) and Cabernet Franc (30%) blend (total 12 tons of red grapes), I found these grapes from a fantastic vineyard in Sonoma and once the grapes reached the proper sugar levels (Brix 25.3 on the Cabernet Sauvignon and 24.9 brix for the Cabernet Franc). We made each wine independently, then we started blending, all this work was done within the custom crush facility as well.

I pay a monthly fee to lease space in the facility to let the wines age and then we will bottle the wines at the facility and once the wines are finished, labeled, boxed up in cases, we can ship from the facility as well.

I have spent over a year fussing over the first vintage and to me, this feels like having a child. I loved these wines before they were made, I loved these grapes while they were just breaking buds. I tried the final Patio last week and it was like I was seeing my future in a glass. Patio is like a blonde daughter who is high energy, young with a bit of an attitude. She is crisp, fresh and lean and she is well behaved at formal events but she is more likely to sneak out the window and go to the beach with her friends. She is ready for the bottle now and needs to be enjoyed young and often.

Fireplace is my son who is maturing slowly but he will develop into a fine young man. I call him unruly because he is so bold and exciting. He needs about 3-5 months more in the barrel. (I think of him as needing a little discipline before he can get out on his own). He is dark and daring and when I tried him the first time, I thought he might need a full 2 years in the barrel but the wine really relaxed after fermentation and he is young and smooth but the high alcohol needs time for the tannins to balance the wine. Fireplace will be ready to bottle about April and ready for pairing with ribs, steak or some great cheeses, like parm, goat or even some really sharp white cheddar.

I attached some photos of the wines so you can see how beautiful they look today. I will be writing more over the next couple of weeks about this harvest and the things we did to get the 2011 vintage into the tanks and barrels as well….this is truly an exciting time for my dream and I am glad you are following along waiting to try the wines!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi