Fish and Fine Wine All In One Week

I'm probably more excited about catching my first bass of the year, but it was a good wine week as well. Catching some fish makes it a great wine week.

Even being in the "business", doesn't mean that I don't still have to buy wine occasionally. Although, I'd be lying, if I didn't admit to professional discounts, but my point is this, even people in the biz occasionally buy bad bottles of wine. The bummer was that this week, I was one of those people. I bought 7 bottles, served 6, and despite its pedigree this bottling bombed. Oh hell, oh well. More upsetting is how my peers reacted, the tasting stopped being about 5 good/great wines and became about one bad one. That's a shame, because we were tasting Pinot Noir and we should all understand that with this varietal, 5 out 6 is awesome.

I was really impressed with Miner's Rosella '06. I've had 2 Miner Pinots in the last couple months and have really been impressed with the nuanced style of the Miner bottlings. We tasted several bottlings from both Gary's and Rosella's and at least today, I prefered the Rosella's. I think the Gary's may have a tad more long term potential as it seemed a little closed and showed more structure, but judging my glasses today Rosella really worked for me.

Pinot Noir is my favorite varietal and I love its schizophrenic personality and spectrum of flavors and aromas. I hate to be anthropomorphic, but Pinot is "complicated" just like a human. After tasting 12 wines over about an hour and a half, the evolution, in the glass, of each wine kept the smile on my face as my fellow tasters grimaced over the flawed wine and the fact that they weren't tasting "Cabs". There simply isn't another varietal that changes so much in the glass. Mesmerizing; and convincing me once again that Pinot is the sublime grape.