The glasses, actually recyclable plastic, come pre-filled with 187ml (6.3-ounces) of Shiraz, Chardonnay or rose and have a peel-off foil lid. They cost £2.25 each ($3.37), which makes them more expensive than buying the same wine by the bottle (four glasses add up to £9, whereas the bottle is £4.50).
[Edit] : Reader Meghan H writes: I recently had a single serve wine in Washington at the Gorge Amphitheatre and it was really good! I had to look it up, and I found your website on my way there. It’s called Copa Di Vino www.copadivino.com This product is really, really cool. The glass is a little different, but is a lot more stable than the UK version looks- you could set it on a table and not worry at all! I think they’re from Oregon, you should check it out. (also recyclable)
It’s an interesting thing, chance. I met Mike from Relic wines while picking up an order from a different winery which shares the same production facility in St.Helena. He was looking through samples he opened to help a chef with pairing ideas for a dinner party that evening. He asked me if I would like to try them, to which I giddily replied yes, since they don’t offer these wines in the community tasting room. He grabbed a box, placed four half sampled bottles inside, and shook my hand: all for a guy who just poked his head in the cellar while his wife used the restroom. I didn’t even tell him I write a wine blog! So, as an addition to my verbal thank you, I figured I’d write my impressions of the wine for my friends to see. I have no idea how much these wines are, but from the look of the website, this is a mail order only type of Winery. If you are looking for a great small production Napa Valley wine, Relic would be an excellent choice.
2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Rockledge Vineyard Napa Valley
15.1% abv
This is a very aromatic wine with notes of summer berries, cherry, and dust. A great mid palate with a well structured finish that exhibits gobs of fruit and big tannins.
Drink 2012 – 2020
92-94 pts. A
2007 Artifact Red Wine, Napa Valley, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot. and Syrah blend.
15% abv
This deep ruby red wine has a fragrant nose of cherry and anise. Chewy tanins and a lingering finish leave you wanting another sip. Very Good.
Drink 2010-2020
92-94 pts. A
2008? Syrah
abv: ?
Inky purple with whiffs of cranberry and raspberry that carry onto a nice palate with firm tanins on the finish.
Drink 2011-2016
90 pts. A-
2008 Ritual, Napa Valley
Mourvedre, Grenache, Syrah
15.2% abv
Cherry, blackberry, mineral, and strawberry notes develop on your tongue, fill your mouth, and end with a medium to full-bodied finish.
90-92 pts. A-
The story of Maynard Keenan James Winery Caduceus (pronounced Kah-dew-see-us) is being told through the lens in the new film Blood Into Wine, directed by Ryan Page & Christopher Pomerenke. Here’s the trailer:
Most wine lovers at some time have experienced cellar envy. It could be the contents, the location, or the features of the storage medium, but each has the ability to evoke feelings of envy and inadequacy. If you haven’t experienced that yet, then this book is for you!
This heavy coffee table book boosts beautiful photographs taken by Andrew French of some of the most over the top wine rooms you’ve ever seen. Samantha Nestor guides you through the journey from a beautiful closet cellar, to an outrageous room capable of storing more wine than any one could ever drink in two life times. One bottle a night, times 64 years (average lifespan – legal drinking age subtracted from the average life span), with leniency for gifts and sharing, a family of two would only need around 30,000 bottles of wine. Yet one of the cellars profiled has storage for 10 times that amount! Seems a bit excessive to me.
So the question arises, if you have the means, would you duplicate some of the efforts showcased in this book? After all, one of the great lessons in life is not having to learn from trial and error yourself, but letting others do that for you. So this book could be looked at as a guide to creating your own cellar by duplicating an effort, or pillaging the best ideas from cellars throughout the book. Most have hired professional designers to help implement their custom vision or adapt their style to the space allowed. It all comes back to personal preference.
This must have been a fun book to work on; sneaking into Oenophiles homes to take a peak at what only their closest friends get to see, listening to stories of what intrigued them about wine in the first place and how their love culminated into what you see today. The willingness to share prized bottles always impresses me about wine lovers, and I’m guessing Samantha was able to imbibe on quite a few fantastic bottles through this process.
By using that link you help me pay for this site. Thanks!
Full Disclaimer: This book was sent to me as a press sample
Note to regular readers: Sorry for the absence in posting, those close to me know why. I’ll pick up where I left off. If you’ve been craving more regular wine blogging news head over and subscribe to Dr.Vino, who in my humble opinion is currently the best wine blogger out there.
The infamous story finally comes to an end, as the main suspect in the horrible wine warehouse fire in Vallejo, Mark Anderson, plead guilty and will be sentenced in January.
Thanks to this plea, I won’t need to testify. Whew
The distinguished Frenchman starred at me from across the table as I brought the wine glass up to my nose and took a few short whiffs of the clear liquid. He knew what my response was going to be; he has witnessed it again and again. His name is Jean-Sebastién Robicquet and he is the master distiller behind a wine based vodka named CÎROC, the third most consumed vodka on the market and now only footsteps behind the top two “Luxury” vodkas in the world, Grey Goose and Belvedere, respectively. An impressive feat considering the product was only launched in 2003. What makes this vodka different, and how was it able to achieve success so quickly? Is the “from wine grapes” moniker just good marketing?
I reclined at a table in a private meeting room downstairs at the E&O Trading Co. in San Francisco. Jean-Sebastién and the entourage sat across the table and we began.
First the neutral: a grain based vodka cut to 20% abv. (note: when tasting vodka’s, you can add the identical amount of distilled water to your glass to neutralize the ethanol making it easier to taste through a flight and pick up nuances.) Even though the ABV was cut, the aroma was still overwhelmed by a rubbing alcohol like smell with a sharp finish. This is your typical grain vodka that I’m guessing retails for under $15.
Then we tasted two separate CÎROC vodka’s, each distilled from the two grapes that are fashioned together to create the final product. First was Ugni blanc (pronounced eew-knee – blaunk), a more neutral aroma that was less harsh than the grain neutral, but surprisingly velvety on the tongue with a fantastic finish that seemed to linger. Then the Mouzac (pronounced Moe-Zach), a rare grape only found in two parts of the world, Gaillac and Limoux France, and only 5%-7% of which is used in the final CÎROC blend. This is where the incredible aroma is fused into the spirit, with fragrant notes of citrus, apricot, and crushed rock that finish with a full bodied mouth feel.
Finally the last vodka poured was CÎROC, the final blend of Ugni Blanc and Mouzac.
Incréabla!
The infusion of what Jean-Sebastién likes to call the DNA or soul of the grapes is apparent. The story is written with the alcohol, and water is just used to cut the 96.4% abv product down to the much more manageable 40% abv or 80 proof on the label.
The name, like the product, is a fusion of two names: Cime or Summit, and Roche or Rock, inspired by the town Gaillac in France where it is produced. The blue color on the bottle is a throwback to bleu de pastel, formerly used in Gaillac as a dye that now lives on in the pastels used to paint doors, windows, and various items throughout the town. The rooster on the bottle helps one associate the vodka’s origin. France is the area that occupies what was once referred to as Gaul, and a similar variant on that name is used to describe a rooster.
The latest creation are two flavored Vodka’s, Coconut, which reminded me of Malibu Rum without the bite, and Red Berry, which has a beautiful aroma of fresh strawberries, cherry and raspberry. Both of these options are worth trying and are much smoother than most flavored vodka’s I’ve tasted.
From the early morning grape harvest and cold fermentation, to the steam heated coil stills that provide indirect heat during distillation, CÎROC is made with great care and attention to quality. No wonder the company expects to dethrone the overhyped and overpriced competition within the next few years.
It was announced today that wine.com has released it’s API, which is the framework that allows third party websites to link to it’s extensive online database. This means that some wine related website’s will choose to incorporate information from Wine.com into their site, allowing for more extensive information to be delivered directly to the end user. Think of what Google maps has done for the internet. There are an untold number of implementations of Google’s API on a hoard of different website’s. Wine.com is hoping to do the same thing.
But how many people actually buy wine through online retailers? According to a 2008 study by Vinquest:
U.S. wineries seem to think they sold about 2% of their wine through online wine retailers in 2007. Total sales through this channel were likely in the $200 to $400 million range for 2007
Not much when you look at the overall picture. There is definitely a lot of room for growth in the area. But is this what the average wine consumer wants? Or is it easier just to pick up a bottle from the local merchant or megamart and not have to wait or worry about shipping?
When budgets are tight, retailers adapt, and in the wine industry, it’s the overpriced wines that need to make the concession.
Among the more eyebrow-raising deals he’s seen in the past several weeks have been half bottles of Joseph Phelps Insignia Napa cabernet 2002, Wine Spectator magazine’s wine of the year, wholesaling for a mere $10 each (the wine’s release price for a full-size bottle was $150; retailers jacked the price even higher once the wine received its distinction)
You never know what might happen after you click the publish button. In a post that appeared nearly 4 years ago, this site covered a piece of news that shocked the wine community on the suspected arson of a facility in Vallejo that housed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of wine. The latest developments (yeah I know, the San Francisco Chronicle got the name of this site wrong, I’m emailing them about it…) include comments made on this little blog by carlmwormwood who authorities say is actually the suspect, Mark C. Anderson, a.k.a “Joe Sausalito”. These comments will be included in testimony against Mark when he goes to stand trial.
Prosecutors said in recent court filings that they should be able to show the Internet postings – made at winexpression.com [edited for accurate spelling], a site geared toward oenophiles – to jurors because they revealed Anderson’s “consciousness of guilt.”
Here is an excerpt of the comments on this site (click for full comments):
After the fantastically fair method of choosing my favorite people to give books to, I have decided on our winners!
Actually, that isn’t how it happened. To keep it fair, I printed everyone’s name onto a sheet of 8×11.5, cut small evenly spaced rectangles out, dropped them upside down in an empty cardboard cup, added some cream and sugar, and had a workmate reach in and pull out the winners:
1. Kimmers
2. Jenny T.
3. Zimmerwoman
4. Les E.
5. Jeff S.
6. Marisa
Congrats to all! I’ll be sending you an email with the list of books to choose from as it dwindles down.
Hopefully you will find these books just as educational and entertaining as Winexpression. One of my favorite’s is Hugh Johnson’s A Life Uncorked. Pieces of his passion helped me appreciate the tales and emotions that are included in every glass. Passion for Pinot is a great coffee table book, with awesome photography provided by the senior sharpshooter on the project, Bob Holmes. Bob is one of those guys that delivers fantastic captures while not being over the top. His composition, attention to detail, and fantastic understanding of the medium makes each page he contributed to a pleasure to gaze at, and for longer than you planned. And of course, my fellow blogger and amigo, Dr.Vino, offers a great piece of work with his latest book A Year of Wine.
If you didn’t win (basically if you’re a loser) and you would still like one of these books, clicking on the link above gives me credit for your purchase and I can continue to pay the enormous hosting fee required to keep this top tiered website running and feed my starving children all at the same time!
Thanks again to everyone for all of your comments! I guess I’ll have to find those notches Emeril is always talking about and kick it up to one of them.
