Merlot Wine Tasting

Smooth Tasting Merlot

Think of velvet and fruit combined and you'll be pretty close to Merlot. Merlot is a red that is approachable for even the novice. It lacks the harsh tannins found in Cabernet Sauvignon, is fruitier in general (noted as plumy) and has a shorter maturation period. It is predominantly described as smooth and fleshy.

Found all over the world, the predominate producers come from Bordeaux St. Emillion, Pomerol, Italy, Switzerland, California, New York State Long Island, Washington State and Chile. Don't expect all of the versions to be straight Merlot. Merlot lends itself to blending well because it smooths out the harsh tannins of many of the bolder wines. For old world wines, Merlot is always found in combination. In France, it is like an insurance policy. Their blends get higher in Merlot during a bad season for Cabernet because it is generally picked earlier before trouble starts. Only one wine from France is 99% Merlot and is one of the world's most expensive wines, Chateau Petrus from Pomerol. In Chile there is no telling if you are really drinking 99% of any varietal because of their lackadaisical labeling laws.

If you are dabbling with a Bordeaux wine, you are drinking Merlot blended to perfection. This is where your geography lessons really come in handy. Bordeaux is blend wine, combining Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot (a few others for good measures but let's not complicate things). The two grapes thrive under different climates however and here's where knowledge of the land comes in handy. The Boudeaux hailing from the left bank have a higher proportion of Cabernet while the right bank hails higher in Merlot. Get your maps out folks. It's all about what grows better on the coastal side with forests and fog (left) or has an unprotected shorter growing season (right). What you get is a beautiful wine that collectors go nuts over.

So back here in the New World, Merlot has had its ups and downs but definitely stands on its own now. Napa Valley vintners were the first to start recognizing Merlot as a stand alone grape. Because it is a fruitier wine, it balances well as a mid-level intensity wine. This means that it lacks the boldness of a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Zinfandel and is softer and rounder on the palette.

A word of caution however with Merlot. Where this grape is planted makes all the difference. A GOOD Merlot should be soft and full, but many of the wines produced in California are harsher than they should be. Again with the geography? Yes. This is a geographically sensitive grape. A Merlot from a hot area has all the softness of a knife. Look for coastal regions. This is one of the reasons Washington State (9check out Walla Walla) and Long Island have been having some success with the varietal so keep that in mind when evaluating your Merlot.

Email us your results please or post your comments on our blog because we'd love to hear from you! There is a button at the end of each article that you can press to post your comments. You can also email this article with the button next to it. Most importantly, subscribe to the blog because we update it all the time.

Happy tasting and we'll see you at www.thewinoclub.com!

Sincerely,
Darcy & Stacy

Merlot Food Pairing

Wino Food

A BIG Thank You goes out to our friend Chris Baily, Owner of Baily's Fine Dining and Front Street Bar & Grill in Old Town Temecula, CA for the beautifully paired recipes for beautiful Merlot. They are so easy and so delicious anyone can make them. They are also perfectly paired with Merlot, since it is one of the ingredients in all three recipes.

Make sure to visit their website at www.oldtowndining.com. The absolute coolest thing about these restaurants is it is a two in one! You enter into Front Street Bar and Grill where the bar offers an amazing list of wines and beer, have a meal perfect for the day time on their patio or go upstairs for fine dining at its best. It could be a whole field trip in one!
Put out some beautiful crostini and you are all set to fly with these three easy appetizers!

Cream Cheese Tapenade

Ingredients:
3 Cups Cream Cheese
2 Tablespoons Garlic, Peeled
2 Tablespoons Shallots, Peeled
½ Cup Merlot
1 Cup Kalamata Olives, Pitted

Directions:
1. Place Olives, shallots, garlic in a sauté pan and lightly sauté until tender.
2. Deglaze with Wine
3. Place all in the food processor including room temperature cream cheese and blend until smooth.

Red Onion Confit

Ingredients:
2 Tablespoons Butter
2 Cups Red Onion, Julienne
1 ½ ounce Merlot
2 Tablespoons Honey
1 ½ ounce Red Wine Vinegar

Directions:
1. Heat the butter in a medium pan on low and scrape the milk solids off the top.
2. Pour the butter back into the pan and add onion. Sauté until softened.
3. Stir in the honey and cook the mixture until the onions are caramelized.
4. Add in the remaining ingredients and reduce for about 5 minutes. Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.

Mushroom Duxelle

Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon Butter
8 Crimini Mushrooms chopped
½ Shallot peeled and chopped
1 ounce Merlot

Directions:
1. Heat butter in pan, add shallots and sweat until transparent. Add wine to deglaze pan
2. Add mushrooms to pan and cook until lightly browned.
3. Add chives and salt and pepper to taste.
4. Let cool before serving.

Don't forget to visit Baily's or Front Street Bar & Grill time you're in the Temecula and say hello to Chris. He is a fellow Rotarian and is known to serve up some mighty fine wine to our winos!

28699 Old Town Front Street - Temecula - CA - 92590
951-676-9567

Merlot Tasting Tips

Merlot Quick Tips

Merlot is all about softness and sensuality. Merlots come from all over the world, from Bordeaux, St. Emillion, Pomerol, Italy, Switzerland, California, even Long Island. It has moderate tannins, high alcohol and little acid. Look for the following flavors and scents when tasting this wine:

Blueberry Blackberry Cherry or Black Cherry
Plum Prune Black Pepper
Cigar Box Mint Toffee
Vanilla Cocoa Coffee
Spice Chocolate Mocha
Leather

Networking With Wine

We know this is not a business site but we can’t resist thinking outside of the box every once in a while.

Creating your own wine tasting club can be a very powerful tool for business people who want to build their business with referrals and relationships. When most people think of a business networking group, they think of business cards and handshaking, 10 second commercials and dry chicken.

When most people think of a wine tasting party, they think of getting together with a few friends and spending the evening together enjoying wine and good food.

Which do you prefer? Obviously you have a kit in your hands so the answer is already apparent.

People refer business to people they know and like. Getting to know your referring partners and meeting with them regularly is the best method of building a great business relationship. This is why the best business groups meet regularly, either weekly or monthly.

Now imagine that instead of dressing in your business finest and passing out cards for a couple of painful hours, you were to toss on a pair of jeans, toss back some great wine, leave your cards in the car and still generate referrals?

The relaxed atmosphere of a wine tasting party makes the relationship building phase of networking painless. By meeting in each other’s homes instead of at a hotel or restaurant, you’ve just moved from business relationship to friend. Forming a wine tasting CLUB rather than just throwing an occasional party creates a consistent presence with one another to reinforce those relationships.

There is one really great advantage to this format as well. We’re not tax professionals here, but if you are building a networking group that just happens to be called a wine tasting club, wouldn’t that qualify as a business expense? So go for the good cheese and some special napkins. You don’t have to make it a gourmet event (remember this is about relaxing with one another), but please skip the American cheese slices on Ritz crackers. These are business professionals you are inviting to your home and you want to leave them with a good impression. The wine will help a lot with that, but it doesn’t hurt to put in a little bit extra.

The same rules apply to a business wino club as to a regular wino club. There is one rule we would like to repeat here because in business it can be a fatal trap. Invite Business People You Like. That seems like an obvious thing to say, but when building a social business network, personality actually weighs in more than occupation. You may know of a person who is a great potential business referral partner but they are just so boring. Don’t invite them. This may sound counter-intuitive but keep reminding yourself that an exciting group will generate more community interest than a stuffy one.

If your club is fun, it will attract more dynamic business people. You’ll have people begging to come. Go the www.thewinoclub.com to order your own kit today to start networking smarter (and have a way better time doing it).

Pinot Grigio or Pinot Gris

The Other Pinot

Pinot Gris or Pinot Grigio is a good change of pace for most of our clubs who are heavy on the reds. The grape itself is actually a relative of Pinot Noir so you red lovers should feel right at home here. Actually, the grape has the same DNA but mutated long ago to grow in a different color. Add that to your trivia bank. However don't expect to smell much because this wine is surprisingly low in aroma so you're going to have to hunt for the bouquet.

This wine varies greatly from region to region. Some prefer Pinot Grigio from TreVenezie in Italy. It is light and frivolous and easy to drink. There's nothing serious about this wine at all, it's just a great bottle to open up for a picnic. It is consumer friendly however and is sure to please most palettes. Italians are big red drinkers as a rule so their attention is usually spent perfecting that science. Don't get us wrong, it is good if you are hot and thirsty but not expecting much complexity.

Pinot Gris from Alsace, France has a much more complex flavor. The whites from Alsace tend to be taken quite seriously as one of the only wine regions in the world that produces predominantly white wines. The only red grape varietal grown here is its cousin, Pinot Noir. To note, Alsace was one of the first wine regions to list the varietal on its wine bottles, rather than the region as done in other parts of France. They also frown upon blending their grapes, taking a pure version of a wine to heart. Their Pinot Gris is dry and sweet as are most of the wines from the region. This means basically that you are drinking a nice crisp fruity wine with a full bodied flavor.

Pinot Gris also comes from Oregon where they were made popular in the early 1990s. Their Pinot Gris is spicy and would be a great pairing to Kathleen's Pear salad below. It is a very food friendly wine and would be a safe bet when bringing your hostess a gift on a sunny day. It was a natural for Oregon, a huge fan of Pinot Noir, to grow this relative. While it is not their top produced white wine, it is one of the favorites from Oregon, thriving on the cooler temperatures for a fuller wine.

So the moral of the story is Pinot Gris, or Pinot Grigio from Italy, has many faces. In a tasting, please try wines from all three of these regions because you really will taste the difference. We laugh in our club because we all have very different palettes and we naturally gravitated towards wines of a different region on this tasting. Email us your results please or post your comments on our blog under Pinot Gris at www.thewinoclub.blogspot.com because we'd love to hear from you!

Happy tasting and we'll see you at www.thewinoclub.com!

Sincerely,
Darcy & Stacy

Pinot Gris Food Pairing

Wino Food

A BIG Thank You goes out to our friend Kathleen , Owner of The Plantation House Restaurant in the Wine Country of Temecula, CA for the beautifully paired recipe for this crisp wine. Her Polenesian cuisine is a perfect match for the tart highlights found in Pinot Gris.

Make sure to visit their website at www.goplantationhouse.com. They are currently taking Easter Sunday reservations so hop on that quickly by calling 951-694-6088. For Groups, Catering, & Marketing call 951-694-2853. They do a lot of special events so be sure to join their email list at theplantationhouse@ca.rr.com.

The Plantation House Restaurant Pukalani Pear Salad

As the weather continues to get warmer, it is time to bring out those summer salads! The Plantation House Restaurant in Maurice Car'rie Winery has featured this summer salad since they opened a little over a year ago and it has fast become a favorite. Served with a beautiful Pinot Grigio, this Spring salad will make your tastebuds pop when the combination of goat cheese and the raspberry vinaigrette hits your mouth!

Kathleen Leonard, Owner

Recipe
1 Bag of mixed field greens
1 whole ripe Pear
½ cup of whole Macadamia nuts
¼ cup Goat Cheese
¼ cup Raspberry Vinaigrette
*We can't give you our recipe, but Girard's Walnut Raspberry Vinaigrette will be a fabulous substitute!

Wash Field Greens and set aside. Take whole macadamia nuts and place on a clean counter and crush them with a rolling pin. Set oven at 350 degrees and spread nuts out over a baking sheet. Put in the oven for five minutes until toasted. Then set aside to cool. Core fresh ripe pear and set aside. Place the mixed greens in a salad bowl to assemble. Toss the cooled macadamia nuts, goat cheese and Raspberry Vinaigrette salad dressing over the salad mixture. To finish, plate each salad individually and then thinly slice the pear over each salad. Put in the refrigerator before serving or serve immediately.

**You may consider adding sliced chicken breast or grilled shrimp to make a heartier salad.

Don't forget to visit The Plantation House Restaurant next time you're in the Temecula and say hello to Kathleen. She is a fellow Wino Club Member and deserves a toast.

Pinot Gris Quick Tasting Tips

Pinot Grigio / Pinot Gris Quick Tips

Pinot Gris is all about REFRESHMENT. There is very little to no aroma to be found in this wine and it is almost clear in appearance. Look for the following scents and flavors when tasting this wine:

Orange Blossom
Lemon
Butter
Pear
Apple
Chalk
Mineral
Almond
Steel
Flint
Honey
Honeysuckle

Look for great Pinot Grigio or Gris coming out of Venezie, Alsace, Germany, Oregon and California.