Good Morning!

I am excited to say we are staying home tonight and celebrating Valentine’s day by making a pizza and opening a bottle of Gridley 2006 Cabernet Franc. This wine is made by Andrew Gridley and we fell in love with it several years ago on a trip to Napa. We had been winetasting all day and on the drive back home to the bay, we stopped at a great place called Brix. It had been raining all day so we were seated inside and the server was so awesome, I think I would have tried anything he recommended. (Tip, if the weather is good, sit outside, AWESOME views of the vineyards).

We now make a point to eat there most everytime we are in Napa. Back to the night we first went, we were seated and the place is lovely and the server said the special was pumpkin and sage pizza as an appetizer and he suggested the Gridley Cab Franc. The earthiness of the wine and sage just set us off. We were loving life and having one of those moments that as a couple you don’t get often. Nobody mentioned the mortgage, the baseball games, the vet appointments or the neighbors parking in our spot. It was us connecting over wine and food, really this is why I drink and make wine, for those moments we all take a deep breath and remember, more things make us common than the things that make us different.

We followed up the pizza by splitting a steak with a blue cheese crust and mashed potatoes. The meal was a HUGE hit for us. On the way out, Brix has a retail area where you can purchase the wines or other wine country collectibles and we bought the last bottle they had on the shelf. A few weeks later I fired up the grill and put on some steaks and opened the bottle and of course prayed it would be as good as we remembered. It was…the next day I hunted down where I could get a case as a surprise for my main squeeze….I was a ROCKSTAR girlfriend when it arrived. I swear we will serve this at Little Billy BadAss’ wedding when that day comes!

Anyway, tonight it will be a low key night, we went out over the weekend like most couples…but we will be enjoying the Gridley and homemade pizza Monday night. I hope you will open something red or pink and clink your glass with a special someone or great friends or even if you are single, raise your glass and enjoy the relationship you might have in the future!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi

Good Morning!

Today I want to talk about having a hangover. I have a strategy to avoid a hangover but it is something that happens to many folks so I thought I would share my wisdom with you.

I have a few rules and as long as a stick with these I rarely ever feel like crap on the morning after!

I stick with wine. I rarely drink anything else. I only drink beer after I have mowed the lawn or something that makes me sweaty. I used to be a big beer drinker, but it was harder to manage my consumption with beer, with wine I know my limits. When it comes to hard liquor I rarely drink it. I will do an occasional margarita, but it really is rare for me to have hard alcohol. In a minute I will walk you through my last hangover and you can see why I felt like crap when it happened last.

I am acutely aware I drink everyday, but my point is not to be drunk or even buzzed for that matter. I drink to better understand the flavor profiles, the textures, the nuances that make wine what it is. I am tasting (and sniffing and feeling) what the grapes and winemakers are trying to say. I am a rookie winemaker, I have so much to learn, this is how winemakers get better.

I rarely drive anywhere that I will be tasting. And I never drive when I go out with my pals. We always go out in San Francisco and taxi’s are everywhere. I travel a lot so I am prepared to catch a cab anytime.

Many of my friends like to use the term…OVER SERVED. I think that is funny, but there is nothing more miserable than waking up and not remembering exactly what you did, where you went and who you chatted with. Your head throbs, your stomach hurts, you want to sleep but you can not. It is a self inflicted illness.

Everyone has a cure…greasy food is my cure all. I go to Mickey D’s and order the Egg McMuffin, hash browns and OJ…that will bring me back from the dead. Others have said food repulses them, others said just tons of water and some say if they eat before they go to sleep or drink lots of water and aspirin will keep them from feeling badly.

I normally really monitor my intake of wine. If I keep it under 3/4 bottle of wine, I wake up happy and ready to go, more than that, I will feel my age the next morning.

The last hangover I had was two weeks ago, previous to that was 7 months ago. But this last hangover, I knew I would feel crappy before it ever started. I was having a girls day out with my friend Michelle in San Francisco. We started out with a bottle of wine and oysters at Hog Island Oyster company, then we went to Ferry Building Wine Merchant and started having flights of wine and after the flights of wine we ordered a glass of wine. After much time passed we headed out to meet friends in the Mission and we were early so we had a bottle of Champagne, once our friends arrived we went to Puerto Allegra and started in on the Margaritas, I lost count of how many pitchers we ordered. I knew I was done but when I returned home someone talked me into a scotch nightcap. I was screwed.

I had to catch a flight the next day and I indeed felt like crap…had I stayed with wine, I might have been fine. but this is probably why I only get to have a girls day out about once a quarter!

Be safe, be smart, know your limits and enjoy..don’t drink and drive!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi

Hey there!

I know Valentine’s day is next Monday, but I am posting this now to help you get ready earlier just in case you are going to celebrate over the weekend instead of Monday. Maybe, I am wrong about that, but we rarely go out during the week. Maybe we are lazy from being together for years or maybe we just want to go on a night where we can relax and not think about things like I have a report due in the morning or I have a meeting to prepare for.

I am not a high maintenance woman. I am sure all women say this, but really all I want is your full undivided attention and I am happy, so this is why we are celebrating over the weekend instead of waiting until the actually day. I also have a struggle because my sweetheart’s birthday is a few days before cupid shows up, so if planned correctly, I can kill two birds with one stone!

So what wines will I be having? Or should I discuss what wines will WOW your main squeeze? I have to say Valentine’s day is all about red and pink. This is a time to celebrate something only the two of you share, each other…so I am all in for the bubbles! Champagne or sparkling wine is my go to on February 14th. I love the “pink” bubbles, I think they taste great and look very festive. Most of the time if you are drinking Champagne, you are having a blend of 3 grapes, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Here are some things to keep in mind.

You might see Blanc de Blanc, this is normally Chardonnay grapes made into Champagne.

If you see Blanc de Noir, this is normally Pinot Noir made into “Pink” Champagne.

These are very loose rules because sparkling and champagnes can be made in either the traditional “Methode Champenoise”, where the secondary fermentation happens in the bottle to create the bubbles. The other process is a bulk champagne making process is called Charmat. The carbon dioxide is added to the pressurized tanks, it is way cheaper than the traditional way to make champagne. The product is still quite good with bigger more lose bubbles.

There are also some very fun sparklers out there made from other grapes like shiraz from down under deep garnet colored wine with bubbles!

Anyway, I will order a glass of sparkling to start out dinner and then with dinner we will order something big and red and beautiful. I am sure we will find a great bottle on the wine list, we love Napa reds, Silver Oak, Cakebread, Jordan and Opus One, but we seem to be on a Chilean wine kick, we love the Cabernets and Malbecs. I am hoping to find a big red velvety wine we will enjoy with steak, we are heading to Fogo de Chao and I know it will be great.

Go get your red or pink on and remember that any wine can create a special moment! You get one Valentine’s day a year, celebrate your love and your love of wine!

Have fun and Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi

Good Morning!

A few weeks ago I got to meet winemaker Cindy Cosco, who is making an amazing unoaked Chardonnay. I am so excited to tell you about this wine but I need to give you some background on Chardonnay first so you can understand my excitement.

Chardonnay is currently taking a beating for it’s reputation as being “cougar juice” and tasting so “woody” and it is so 1990’s. It’s not fair but let’s take a minute and discuss it. Chardonnay is a very important part of the reason California wines are on the radar with world wide wine drinkers back in the late 1970’s.

First, Chardonnay is easy to say and to read on a label so Americans like that. Second, if I look at the current stats on who drinks Chardonnay, you will see that 65% are women over 40 with some level of college education. You will also see that they are fiercely loyal to the brand of Chardonnay they choose. Once they find the brand they like, they stick with it.

Back in 1976 Chateau Montalena, from California, entered an international wine competition and beat the french white burgundies. It was the first time California, Chardonnay was blind tasted next to the french white burgundies officially. (When you see a bottle of French White Burgundy, what you will find in that bottle is the Chardonnay grape, but it was produced in Burgundy, France…it will be great white, with more minerality than most American Chardonnay’s).

But California winemakers seemed to get a little heavy handed at that time with the chardonnay while it was in the oak barrels. Some of the chardonnay tasted so “woody” and “oaky” it was losing it’s appeal. If you have heard the term ABC..Anything but Chardonnay, you know what I am talking about.

So fast forward to today, I started following Cindy on Facebook and Twitter, and I saw several wine blogs about her unoaked Chardonnay and so I ask her to lunch and I was totally entertained and educated about her and her winemaking. Before I bore you too much with my version of her life and the story, check out her website www.passaggio.com. She grew up watching her grandfather make wine and after a highly successful career in law enforcement, she moved to the west coast to pursue wine as a career.

You know I don’t normally say, go buy this wine…but do yourself a favor, find her on the web order a case and prepare for greatness…she also has rose’ (but I have not tried it yet). After hearing her story she and I went to the winery, I could not wait to taste her wines. Her view on winemaking is simple, keep the grapes as close to what they would taste like on the vine. Barrels impart flavors to the wine, so by keeping everything as “pure” as possible she has created something very special.

So I get home with my bottle and she uses a Zork for a closure, and I loved that, but I have 3 friends over and we unzipped the Zork and poured. I did not say a word about what we were trying. My first thoughts were peaches, tangerines and a very crisp, clean and long finish. That was a far call from the almost liquid toothpick thing that happened with the aged in oak barrel chardonnay.
I loved it, I was thinking pairings instantly, goat cheese or shrimp and pasta or grilled chicken, my mind was all over the place.

But what really struck me was the reaction from my pals. The first one said, Oh that’s good…did you make it? ( I wish).The second said I love how vibrant it is, it almost tingles and the third is a die hard wine freak said this was fermented in stainless and the acid levels are so balanced. It is rare all of us agree on anything..it’s a girl thing, we like to debate, but this was a winner, great job Cindy and I can not wait to order a case!

You can not find Passaggio wines on the shelf, so go online, get a case, this should be $30 a bottle and it is about half that. Something new and exciting, I am a HUGE fan!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi

Passaggio wine, greatest wine find of the last 3 months!

Good Morning!

After hitting the Unified Grape and Wine expo last week my head is still spinning with info and I am hoping writing about it will help give me some clarity. Soon I will be able to bottle my first vintages of the TJR Select wines. There is much to consider, bottles, bottle shapes, sizes, color of the glass, labels, label design, what to name your wine, what are the price points of the wine, and that is just to name a few of the things I am researching.

Today I am reading and gathering information on closures. I always thought I would just stick a cork in it and put a capsule (the foil thing over the top of the bottle), over it to look pretty and then it would be all ready to go! After seeing all my options I am considering what to use. The cost of corks, Zorks and screwcaps are all about the same.

What is a Zork? Well, I personally love these, I saw them first on a Zinfandel in Costco, and bought the wine just to see what was up with the cork kinda thing on top…here is what I learned. it is made from recycled plastic, so the Californian in me is happy about that, it looks kinda like a little football helmet on the bottle of wine. You will see it looks like it wraps around the top of the bottle and you pull the plastic tab and it uncoils itself from around the bottle until you get to the top and when it gets to the top you pull it out like a bottle stopper.

With a screwcap or Zork, no corkscrew is needed at all. Just twist and pour, so the Process Engineer in me LOVES the reduction in steps before the wine is in my mouth. The upside for me is I make wine that can be aged, but really, it is ready to drink when it hits the bottle. I mention this because I am told if you use a Zork or Screwcap, once you put the wine in the bottle the wine does not age like it might in a bottle with a cork.

The real battle for most consumers is if wine has a screwcap on it, it seems to mean less quality wine in the bottle.I know that is not true, many major producers with well respected brands use them all the time. I find positives in all the closures. I love corks because I swear I can feel my blood pressure drop from the moment I pull out the corkscrew, until I cut away the capsule and then uncork the bottle, then pour the wine. Some days that seems like too many steps!

It is said that a bottle of wine with a cork in it, will over time allow tiny amounts of air to get in and the wine will constantly be “reinventing” itself, much like Madonna her entire career. These wines will go through times when it is young and volatile, then relaxing and at certain points it can go through a “dumb” stage where it kinda has no real taste or any real special qualities, then it mellows out to it’s potential wine greatness. The problem is if you are cellaring your wine, you have to know when these stages hit or you just have plain old wine and it loses it’s specialness. You see only about 3-7% of all wines sold will be in a cellar. 95% of all wines purchased today will be consumed within 48 hours.

I promised to keep these blogs brief, but sometimes I can not. If you have any thoughts on closure on your wines let me know! I still love corks but there are many options, I can not make up my mind!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi