Wine - or, what your favorite smelly grape water says about you.

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Official wine of KF

(besides Mad Dog and Night Train)

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Splurged on a La Crema pinot this weekend. The 2022 is good drinking right now. It's BS it's priced at $23.99 "on sale" when it was $18.99 a year ago, but inflation has hit wine hard too. It has such a perfect mouth feel imo. Nice and light on the mouth with a good finish. Cheaper pinots often have a bad mouthfeel imo.
 
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smile.jpg said:
Do you think part of the reason why white people don't have many overly spicy dishes is because they don't go well with wine?
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Bit late, but plenty of wines pair fantastically with spicy foods - the key is to have at least a little bit of sweetness. One of the strongest tells that someone is being pretentious about wine without actually knowing anything is a universal dismissal of sweet wine, so a lot of people in the US will suffer through horrible wine pairings in order to avoid being mocked by would-be snobs. But a nice sweet Spätlese or Auslese Riesling, or a demi-sec Champagne, or a nice off-dry or even straight-out sweet Chenin Blanc are all fantastic paired with spicy food - the sweetness and spice sort of mellow each other in a very enjoyable way. I remember pairing a honey-sweet Quarts de Chaume with a Szechuan dish and it being a match made in heaven.

The reason most northern European countries don't make spicy food is due to their growing climate - it's marginal for grapes, so peppers have a hard time maturing in a lot of those regions. In Italy, southern France, and Spain, where the growing season is much longer, there are more spicy dishes. You can get 'spice' in northern regions, but it's mostly mustard and horseradish, not capsaicin.
 
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I am typically only a fan of Red wines. White wines just don't sit right with my tastebuds. Every weekend or so I'll drink any of the red Apothic branded wines
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Weizsacker said:
I am typically only a fan of Red wines. White wines just don't sit right with my tastebuds. Every weekend or so I'll drink any of the red Apothic branded winesView attachment 5830578
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Apothic is good shit and not too pricey either. I've been fucking with Coppolas shit recently too. And I'm in total agreement with only drinking red. It just feels classier as retarded as that may sound
 
This month...
Finally pulled out the Dandelion Wine after 12 months secondary aging - Started a 2 week bottle aging cycle.
Had a couple glasses today. Hits you with a prominent, astringent herbal/floral note, that dissolves to a traditional white wine profile. Aftertaste is very pleasant and memorable. The aging was excellent for mellowing the wine.

Pulled 2 bottles for recipes, carbonated 5 bottles for champagne, back-sweetened 2 bottles for flavor experiments, kept 3 bottles for longer bottle-aging.
The back-sweetened wine softened the initial hit - but softens all notes all around.

Carbonating is proceeding - no explosions yet. I am using crown caps - not corks. Bottles are punted (champagne bottles)
 
Sneakywombat666 said:
Austrian ice wine (where they only pick the grapes if it's below freezing) was the best wine I've ever had. Sweet and delicious. I could happily drink that as my only wine. A shame it's so hard to find in my country.
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Ice wine and late harvest are my to go mid grade when I can't afford Tokaji/Tokay aszu wines.
The Sauce Boss said:
I've always been a moscato and Tokaji type, if I drink wine I want it sweet, and I'll never say no to a sangria.
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Sangria, south european muscats are okay. Not ice wine or late harvest, nowhere near Tokay, but better than average in the sweet category.
Vlinny-kun said:
(Bumping because I'm drunk as hell)

I just tried Eiswein for the first time. Very unique. Very sweet. Very good. Going to try to make it a tradition at my house because of the positive reception.
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Ice wine is lovely and fruity.

I do love Tokaji/Tokay above all else. It is sweeter and spicier than Ice wine.
Sauternes wines are like a 80% Tokay / 20% water mix. Not bad but... don't cut my wine with water frogs!

If it doesn't do it, there is Tokay Essence, where alcohol is replaced by more sugar. It doesn't give you hangover or makes Allah mad, as youcan't get drunk from it. So it is the best and most exclusive wine, while it isn't a wine as it is too sugary to ferment and only has trace alcohol in it.

A small glass will set you back 150 dollars.
 
Had a bottle of (opened) Primitivo sitting in my cupboard for entirely too long, that shit tastes like port wine now.

I don't drink wine (or drink in general) that often these days but i am partial to sardinian red wines, Cannonau being my favourite. For whites it's either Vermentino or Vernaccia, Vernaccia only the sardinian variant with its beautiful amber colour and unique taste. Fuck any non-italian white wines, Riesling, Müller-Thurgau, they all taste like sour piss to me. I don't even like Pinot Grigio that much.

Edit: Fuuuuuck Ruby Cabernet, i gag just smelling it. Californians know shit about making good wine.
Orange Rhymer said:
This month...
Finally pulled out the Dandelion Wine after 12 months secondary aging - Started a 2 week bottle aging cycle.
Had a couple glasses today. Hits you with a prominent, astringent herbal/floral note, that dissolves to a traditional white wine profile. Aftertaste is very pleasant and memorable. The aging was excellent for mellowing the wine.

Pulled 2 bottles for recipes, carbonated 5 bottles for champagne, back-sweetened 2 bottles for flavor experiments, kept 3 bottles for longer bottle-aging.
The back-sweetened wine softened the initial hit - but softens all notes all around.

Carbonating is proceeding - no explosions yet. I am using crown caps - not corks. Bottles are punted (champagne bottles)
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That sounds really interesting, i'd love to try it.
 
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Sideways with Paul Giamotti always made California Wine Country look so interesting, I'd like to go bit I'm sure it won't live uo to my mental image I've been storing since childhood. And there will be no Sandra Oh waiting for me
 
Lt. H. DuBois said:
Sideways with Paul Giamotti always made California Wine Country look so interesting, I'd like to go bit I'm sure it won't live uo to my mental image I've been storing since childhood. And there will be no Sandra Oh waiting for me
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Napa is horribly overpriced nowadays, with a lot of big corporate joints and a county government which is incredibly hostile to the small, family producers who used to make up the backbone of the county. Back when Sideways came out you could sit down and taste wines for a nominal fee or even free. Nowadays many small wineries are barred from offering tastings, and the big glitzy ones have turned themselves into instagramable 'lifestyle experiences' where rich, vapid whores & techbros will pay $100 or more to sit down and taste overpriced wines on a manicured terrace. There are a few small producers who are 'grandfathered in' and you can get a nice tasting off the beaten path, but there aren't many of them.

Go to Sonoma, the Salinas Valley (Arroyo Seco, Gabilan Mountains, Santa Lucia Highlands), Lake County, Paso Robles, Mendocino, or the Sierra Foothills. A lot of smaller regions outside of Napa offer a rustic, affordable experience with wines that can sometimes rise to the level of Napa at a fraction of the price on a $/quality basis.
 
I'm sipping this right now.
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It's a VERY sweet wine with honey/flowery/fig notes. It must be served cold (no ice), it's not a main course wine. It can also be used for cooking. It's sweetness can be overbearing and it doesn't have a very interesting flavor profile, little to no tannin so if you don't like that mouth texture it's a plus I guess. You will get drunk fast because it's somewhat high % alcohol (~15%).
It's very affordable: 4.7€ 75cl
 
エボラちゃん said:
I'm sipping this right now.
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It's a VERY sweet wine with honey/flowery/fig notes. It must be served cold (no ice), it's not a main course wine. It can also be used for cooking. It's sweetness can be overbearing and it doesn't have a very interesting flavor profile, little to no tannin so if you don't like that mouth texture it's a plus I guess. You will get drunk fast because it's somewhat high % alcohol (~15%).
It's very affordable: 4.7€ 75cl
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That's usual for muscats, muscatel, muskotály. One of my preferred wine grapes often used in Hungarian sweet white wines, german icewines too.

There are some that are better like Kövérszőlő, but I can find that once every decade while in Hungary, so getting it abroad is a tall order.

The variant almost died out and is really finicky when it comes to its habitat so its rare.
 
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Male Idiot said:
I do love Tokaji/Tokay above all else. It is sweeter and spicier than Ice wine.
Sauternes wines are like a 80% Tokay / 20% water mix. Not bad but... don't cut my wine with water frogs!

If it doesn't do it, there is Tokay Essence, where alcohol is replaced by more sugar. It doesn't give you hangover or makes Allah mad, as youcan't get drunk from it. So it is the best and most exclusive wine, while it isn't a wine as it is too sugary to ferment and only has trace alcohol in it.
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I love all these wines, though I've never tried Eszencia. But it's not quite as you put it. Sauternes and Tokaj are both made from botrytized grapes. Furmint and Semillon are the main grapes used for Tokaj and Sauternes, respectively. They're both grown in areas with reliable morning fog in the autumn which burns off by the afternoon. This means that a fungus called Botrytis cinerea begins to grow on the grapes. If it doesn't rain and the fog comes and goes the skin of the grape never breaks, and the controlled growth of the mycelia desiccates the grapes while producing unique, honey-like flavor compounds that are unique to this production method.

It's quite expensive because if the skin does break or the weather turns you can lose a lot of grapes. Also, the uneven shriveling of the grapes means that you have to harvest, berry by berry, in multiple passes through the vineyard as they reach the perfect point of maturation instead of just cutting whole bunches off. They let the grapes shrivel a lot further in Tokaj, creating a super-shriveled kind of grape that they call aszu. These raisin-like berries are then blended back in to other wines from the areas in different quantities called 'puttanyos' named after the old-fashioned harvesting backpacks that they used to use. The higher the puttanyos number the more aszu berries are in the blend. Eszencia is made from 100% aszu berries. The osmotic pressure is so high from the extreme concentration that it will outright kill most yeasts. I think that the yeast that they use to ferment it was originally isolated from jam, and usually only gets to about 5% alcohol. Sauternes they use almost all shriveled grapes, but they aren't shriveled as much as the aszu are - it's not watered down.

But both of these wines prove that people who look down their nose at sweet wines are just telling on how little they know. Château d'Yquem Sauternes sells for about $500 a half bottle, and Eszencia sits at about the same price points. These are some of the most sought after wines in the world, and are admired by some of the most knowledgeable people in the wine world. So the next time someone sneers about 'sweet wine', just know that they're a tryhard, uninformed snob.
 
If I drink want to feel fancy, I’ll have a Riesling. Tbh don’t care what brand or even know the difference.

I’d like to try mead at some point because I do love honey, just don’t know what I should look for.
 
Anyone have some good red wine recommendations? Would like to turn my rampant alcoholism into something classy. I see Apothic thrown around a little bit.
I plan on using it as a social thing, so I won't be binge drinking it, so anything below $250 is fine.
 
I like Syrah-based wines. I also like Champagne and Cava provided they're dry but not too acidic.

Do Spanish wines taste spicy to anyone else?
 
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