The Iron Chevsky Wine Blog

Incredible dinner last night with Dee Vine Wines founder John Dade Thieriot punctuated by a 1971 Schloss Schonborn Erbacher Marcobrunn Beerenauslese wine. My oh my! I am all hung over. Rieslings are deevine! (Note: Vineyard Gate carries a good number of Dee Vine imported wines).

Great values: Schloss Schonborn 2006 Rieslings from Nussbrunnen, Pfaffenberg, and Marcobrunn vineyards: Pairing with Asian food - in this case the spicy Sichuan: Available at Vineyard Gate for under $20 - incredible!

On Wednesday night, in a 180-degree reversal of my past disposition, the youthful outshone the mature. I love old Rieslings. In fact, Riesling is probably the most age-worthy white wine on Earth (along with France's Sauternes and Hungary's Tokaj, and is more flexible with wider variety of foods than the other two), with some 30-50 year-olds still drinking wonderfully. At 10+ years of age, the sweetness mellows, and the flavors meld together into something much more complex and indescribable than the sum of the parts, while the color transforms from light straw to haunting amber (as in the photo on the left). Normally I find, the sweeter the Riesling to begin with, the better it tastes with age, gradually losing its youthful fluffiness. The acid and mineral never subside, so it's important for the sugar to still remain, lest you get a salty, minerally and sometimes mediciny wine. That's why in my opinion, the Auslese (late harvest) level Rieslings make more enjoyable win...

...continued from Episode 7 . If you are new to this series, start here . This is an awesome Japanese Manga -drama about wine. Laugh, cry, enjoy as you watch Kami no Shizuku ("Drops of God"). Episode 8 Part 1: Part 2: Part 3: Episode 9 is here .

It was 10:30am or so on a Sunday morning, third set. As I stepped out of the shade into the sun and up to the service line, glancing at my opponents on the other side of the tennis net, a sudden wave rolled over me. At that moment, tangibly and explicitly, I felt the warmth of the Palo Alto sun, and at the same time the freshness from the cool of the morning. An hour earlier, it had been too crisp, an hour later - hot. As the wave of perfect comfort reached my consciousness, it became distracting. Bouncing the tennis ball on the service line, I thought of balance - a perfect balance between hot and cold, a moment when you are both pampered by the sun and energized by the fresh air. And quickly, my mind jumped to ... Riesling. So there I was, serving, down 2 sets, fighting for the third, and I thought of ... Riesling??!!! That was it - that feeling of balance was the best way I'd ever related to Riesling, where luscious, lazy sweetness and refreshing, energizing sourness are in a...

On Sunday I had this wine Le Coq Rouge 2006, from Languedoc. It was wine #5 in the line-up, after two whites - a Muscadet and a Prosecco, and two other reds - a brand name Burgundy and a Grand Cru Bordeaux. It was the cheapest wine of them all - $9. It had a simple name, a simple label, and a screwcap, and after its vastly more exalted predecessors, it promised little to impress me. It was there as a novelty, a change of pace for my friends and neighbors to something different, lesser known, and maybe, just maybe a better value? Sniff - funk and barnyard. Sip - oh, what's that? Warm ripe black fruits, earth, and hard acidity - better than I would have expected from the rustic South of France. More like a mix of Bordeaux and Cotes du Rhone. Look at the back label - Cab, Merlot, Syrah, Grenache - aha! A guy from Bordeaux made this wine in the South of France - that explains it. Not a simple wine after all - backbone of something perhaps twice the price of this $9 Languedoc, with a k...