Book Review: Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book 2009

The Book: Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book 2009: 32nd Edition

The Price: $10.17 at Amazon.com

This is a great little book. It has a lot of good information in it, and it's very conveniently sized.

Since there's a lot of good about this book, I'll start with what I don't like.

First of all, the dust jacket gets in the way. The book has a chart inside the front cover that gives a snapshot of various wine vintages. The dust jacket covers them.

The book is fairly comprehensive, but it omits wineries from the midwest. There may not be a lot of wineries that are any good in the midwest, but I don't think they should be dismissed out of hand.

Okay, that was it for my complaints.

Now on to the good.

I like the size of the book. It will easily fit into a coat pocket or a purse. Lacking either of those, the book is small enough to be easily carried with you to the wine shop.

The book covers an amazing number of wineries given its small size. Granted, each winery only gets a couple of lines, but the information it gives is straightforward and useful.

The book is intelligently laid out. It is organized by country (and region, where needed). It also has indexing on the spine to delineate the country/region.

I did a little bit of spot checking to compare the book's impressions of wineries with my own observations. Of course, I had to start with Sokol Blosser. Johnson says, "superb wines throughout with an esp outstanding Pinot N..." Good to know he agrees with me. Oh, and he gave them 3-4 stars. I next looked at Viu Manent, which I recently reviewed. Johnson gave them 1-2 stars, which pretty much sums up my feelings for them.

I won't bore you with further details, but I found Johnson to concur with my assessment of every winery I looked at. That's either good for me, or bad for Johnson. Either way, I will be using this book as I shop for wines.

Besides providing information on wineries, the book also has a convenient section on wine/food pairings. This alone is worth the purchase price.

Whether you're a wine aficionado or a neophyte, I highly recommend this book.

Shop Review: Wine Cellar (Portland)

I was in Portland for Christmas. While there, I took a trip to The Wine Cellar.

The Wine Cellar is kind of out of the way, and is located in the back of a little strip mall. The location kind of dooms the shop. It's not going to pick up much foot traffic. People will only go there if they are actively looking for the shop.

Their selection leaves a lot to be desired. They do not carry a very broad variety of wines. Since they are located in Oregon I expected them to carry an abundance of Oregon wines. They really don't seem to carry a much wider selection of wines than Fred Meyer or Haggen. Sadly, none of the three stores carried any Sokol Blosser wines beyond Meditrina or Evolution, both of which I can find in my local stores in Seattle.

The store is rather spare. They rely heavily on wire racks and folding tables to display their wines. They don't seem to have a lot of any single wine on hand.

On the plus side, I hear that the owner, Erin Palmer, hosts phenomenal classes and is a ton of fun. Unfortunately, she was not working the day I visited the store (if she drops me a line, I will gladly give her a chance to state her case and correct anything I may have missed or misstated about her shop).

The prices in the wine shop did not strike me as being exceptionally attractive. Between the limited selection, the location and the lack of compelling prices I have a difficult time seeing any reason to select this shop over a well-stocked grocery store.

Again, Erin, if you see this review please drop me a line. I am a huge supporter of independent wine sellers, and would love to give you a chance to give your side of the story.

R Wines 2007 Bitch Grenache

The Winery: R Wines
The Wine: 2007 Bitch Grenache
The Price: $11.99 at The Wine Seller

This is another wine from my Thanksgiving Weekend trip to Port Townsend. I bought it solely for the name. After nearly a week of unseasonably cold weather and snow, reviewing Bitch just seemed a cathartic outlet.

Bitch is imported from Australia. I could not get a good photo of the back of the bottle, but it says, "Bitch, bitch, bitch...and bitch some more." A total of 76 occurrences of "bitch" on the back label. Fits my mood about the weather quite nicely.

The wine is a medium intensity red color. Lighter than a Merlot or Pinot Noir.

The wine has aromas of plums and vanilla with a slight hint of cinnamon.

This is a fairly light, fruity wine. It has cherry and berry flavors with a pepper finish. It's not a great wine, but it's drinkable. I see it as more of a novelty wine than a wine you'd buy to drink. And at $11.99 it's priced right for your favorite mother-in-law or ex-girlfriend. :-)

Cono Sur 2007 Pinot Noir

The Winery: Cono Sur
The Wine: 2007 Pinot Noir
The Price: $12.99 at The Wine Seller.

Cono Sur is a Chilean winery. This is the first Pinot Noir from Chile that I've ever seen. I didn't realize that there was any Pinot Noir production in Chile.

This wine is one of the wines offered by Cono Sur that uses sustainable agriculture practices in the production of their grapes. They say that they're using more natural methods of fertilizing and controlling pests and weeds.

The bottle is corked with a natural cork, topped with a fairly thick wax seal.

The wine looks fairly thin in the glass. It lets quite a bit more light through than other Pinot Noirs that I've encountered.

Despite the thin appearance of the wine, it is pretty aromatic. It has aromas of cherries, blackberries and prunes. It has the warm aromas typical of a good Pinot Noir.

As the thin appearance of the wine portends, this is a fairly thin Pinot Noir. It is too sweet and too thin. The predominant flavor of this wine is cherry, with a berry undertone. The flavor isn't bad, but it's just not very well developed. The wine seems watery and is lacking complexity. My recommendation is to pass on this particular wine. Chile produces many very good wines. But even at $12.99 I have a hard time recommending this as a Pinot Noir.

A Flashback

While on vacation in Tucson last week, I ran across a store that carried a couple of the Ditka wines. I picked up a bottle of the Chardonnay, which I previously reviewed.

I actually enjoyed the wine more than I remembered. It is the best Chardonnay that I've ever had. Granted, the list of Chardonnays that I've sampled is fairly short. This would be a great wine to serve during the holidays.

Viu Manent 2007 Malbec

The Winery: Viu Manent
The Wine: 2007 Malbec
The Price: $6.99 (I think!) at The Wine Seller

This is the first of the wines that I picked up over the Thanksgiving weekend.

I've had Malbec on my mind lately. I saw several publications recommend it as a good accompaniment to the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. I also sampled a couple recently at the Sips and Shoes charity event a few weeks back.

I've sampled several wines from Chile, but this is a new winery to me. This wine was surprisingly priced. The bottle has an embossed label, belying its sub-$10 price.

The bottle is, unfortunately, sealed with a synthetic cork. It wasn't a dense as some that I've encountered, so it didn't take TOO much effort to remove it from my Rabbit corkscrew.

In the glass, the wine appears appropriately colored for a Malbec. It's deep purple in color and has decent, if not spectacular, legs as I swirl it in my glass.

The wine has aromas of toast, cherries and blackberries. And it has a very slight but troubling odor of cat urine. I kid you not. Cat urine. That's one that I don't find on my wine aroma wheel.

This wine really doesn't have anything to recommend it. It's pretty bad. I has that crinkle-your-tongue quality of toothpaste with an OJ chaser. I'm trying to pick out flavors. I'm coming up blank. I've got nothing. It's just god-awful bad wine. With a nice label.

Excuse me while I go dump it down the drain.