Riesling Rules Book » 2008 » August

First sampling for harvest 2008

Nicolas — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:49:32 +0000

Yesterday we had the first samples for the 2008 harvest season. The results: 13.8 for the Riesling at Selenium (Yakima Valley) and 16.5 for the Chenin Blanc at Andrews (Horse Heaven Hills). It looks like we are a good two weeks behind which is great for Riesling and other aromatic whites.

Catch the Summer of Riesling when you can

Nicolas — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:29:39 +0000

Paul Grieco’s wine bar in New York City is wrapping up its Summer of Riesling program presenting a 100% Riesling wine list for the summer! Paul, thank you for the great support for our favorite grape varietal. I hope that more restaurants and wine bars accross the country will follow your steps as we need to keep the Riesling revolution alive and moving. About a 100% Riesling month from a great retailer.

To go to Paul’s site: http://www.wineisterroir.com/

Stir Crazy and Asian food pairing

Nicolas — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:06:45 +0000

Stir Crazy is a pretty cool restaurant chain in the North East mainly. Their food is great and very Riesling friendly. They have a cool video about asian food and wine pairing at http://www.stircrazy.com/company/the_book.aspx

I could not copy the video but it is the third video down “how to pair with Asian Food”.

Spicy ethnic food wine pairing

Nicolas — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:49:56 +0000

Most often when I go to a small ethnic restaurant (I favor Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern, North African and Mexican), I enjoy a bit of spice and sometimes brutal heat. It is always puzzling to find a good drink (with alcohol please) to go along with a good curry, a spicy couscous and other Pad Thais. Often the choice is between the house wine (no thank you, I do not want your white zin…), the beer (not another Kirin or Tsingtao please) or an uninspiring cocktail (likely with Tequila or Vodka that do not taste much of anything). I often retreat to water or, I must admit, a beer (light lagers or pilsners are a favorite if available).

I have found out that most of the smaller ethnic restaurants are likely run by foreign born staff with little wine knowledge. They usually see the wine list as important as the fortune cookies (I would not be surprised if they pay more attention to the cookies at times). The wine is usually provided by the beer salesman of very large wine and beer distributors (they are the only one that really have the time and incentive to visit those smaller accounts). The beer salesman is usually incentivized on beer and his wine book is often dismal. The combination of an uneducated buyer and a sales person that want to push beer is unfortunately an uninspiring wine selection in 99% of small ethnic food restaurant.

If anyone as a solution on how to change this sad state of affair, please leave a post!

PS: Did I say that Riesling (in many forms), can aikido most, if not all, of those ethnic foods…

New cocktail with Pacific Rim Chenin Blanc

Nicolas — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:51:30 +0000

This week I was visiting a great restaurant in San Francisco called Sens (http://www.sens-sf.com/) with our local sales person (Jo M.). Jo and I were chatting about the cocktail trends in San Francisco and to demonstrate how good wine cocktail can be he asked the bartender to create a Chenin Blanc based cocktail. I am not sure if it has a name yet but it tasted just perfect with the food and the hot weather. Here is the recipe: 1 part Eldelflower liquor (Use St Germain liquor: http://www.stgermain.fr/), one part Pacific Rim Chenin Blanc and one part club soda – all of it in a tall glass on ice with a lemon twist on the rim. This might be the best wine cocktail I ever had.

Icebreaker at Luna Park with Vin De Glaciere

Nicolas — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:40:30 +0000

One trend that I have been following lately is the use of wine in cocktails. I made a few discoveries during my last trip in San Francisco.

Luna Park’s (http://lunaparksf.com/) “Icebreaker” is one of the best Vin De Glaciere cocktail I have tried. It is one part Riesling Vin De Glaciere and one part chilled ciroq vodka with two frozen grapes in a martini glass. Very dangerous and delicious cocktail. Highly recommended.

Thank you Luna park for this inspirational use of our Vin De Glaciere!!

Food friendly wines by Sharon Kapnick

Nicolas — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:58:34 +0000

Thank you to Sharon Kapnick of the New Yourk Times (among others) for her great article about Riesling’s versatility with food: http://www.seniorwomen.com/hs/articles/kapnick/articlesKapnickRiesling.html

It is a very toughtful article with many references to the Riesling world. Riesling is really the greatest food wine.

Wallula Riesling 2007

Nicolas — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:40:42 +0000

Duane at WineFoot.com has reviewed our 2007 Wallula. Thank you Duane, you are one of the first one in the country to review the wine.

http://www.winefoot.com/index.php/2008/08/08/2007-pacific-rim-wallula-vineyard-riesling/

Vegan wine

Nicolas — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:35:00 +0000

Yesterday I got a call asking me if our wines were vegan. Well, first I had to think about what that really meant (from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan Veganism is a diet and lifestyle that seeks to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose. Vegans endeavor not to use or consume animal products of any kind) and then think back about our winemaking and our package. I can think of any animal product in our package at all (glass, aluminum, paper, plastic…) and in the winemaking either, except in the Dry Riesling since we use a microscopic amount of Isinglass (sturgeon bladder) at the end of our winemaking. There might be also some insects (do they count?) that might be picked with the grapes and a few fruit flies that fall in the tank during fermentation. So,can I claim that all our wines are Vegan ( with the exception of the Dry Riesling, though honestly we use about one pint of the Isinglass for the whole blend…)?