Kronick Wino

My Favorite Wine Books & Publications

Friday, September 25th, 2009 | wine educator | No Comments

It’s imperative that I continue to remain educated when it comes to my passion of wine. Whether it’s reading up on the latest and greatest wines, needing to understand the differences between Rioja and Riebera del Duero, unable to pronounce ‘Txacoli’ or just need a bit of wine humor to get me through the rough spots, I turn towards my favorite wine books.

Here’s a good sampling for the inquiring minds who want to know…

• ‘Red, White And Drunk All Over - A Wine Soaked Journey From Grape to Glass‘ by Natalie MacLean

Natalie has a solid wine background and comes from the north country of Canada, ay (and no, i didn’t just pick this book because she holds a fantastic name as my own) . She’s a wonderful writer, sommelier and expert of off-beat food & wine pairings. She covers the gamut of regions, history, wines, anecdotal humor and covers ‘people to know’ in the wine business in her book. She’s light, bubbly, sociable, a motivated learner and she passes on her knowledge and passion through her writing. Oh, and you can sign up for her very own free newsletter, Nat Decants at www.nataliemaclean.com. It’s part of my email inbox…what are YOU waiting for?

• ‘The Grail - A year rambling & shambling through an Oregon vineyard in pursuit of the best pinot noir wine in the whole wild world‘ by Brian Doyle

I am in love with Oregon. I’ve never been there, I’ve never known anyone who lived there nor had I ever sipped on a wine from there until about 3 years ago. I am madly in love and his name is Willamette Valley! Specifically, Dundee Hills. Doyle runs around with Jesse Lange from Lange Vineyards for a full season to get a real taste of what life if like working, producing and selling wine on what is essentially ‘just a farm’. A farm?? Such humble words. I felt like I was reading poetry. Doyle does a fantastic job of relaying not only the chaos that takes place on most vineyards, but the history of the land and, more importantly, the seductiveness of making wine. This is THE book that put my love of Oregon Pinots on the Wino Tasting map!

• ‘Great Wine Made Simple’ by Andrea Immer

This was the FIRST book I ever read that helped me hone in on my wine selling skills back in the day of Barcelona Restaurant. It is a superb, concise and informative read on the major wine basics. Just don’t ask me about Italy… I still get stumped to this day. HAHA! But if you just want a good, overall summary of wine, the major grapes, regions, tasting notes and how to read labels, this is the book for you! I highly recommend it to ANYONE just getting their feet wet and don’t know where to start. You can read my other experiences with this book here.

• ‘The Wine Bible’ by Karen MacNeil

I received this fantastic book as a birthday gift and what a wonderful reference book it makes! I even utilized it to understand some of the history of Spanish wines during my Wine Educator’s course back in July! This is a MUST as part of your collection. It’s a nice thick book too, so it doubles nicely as a coffee table book / wine glass coaster!

Other Publications to keep you in the ‘know’:

• Email: Snooth.com newsletter

Next in my reading queue:

• The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It
• At Home in the Vineyard: Cultivating a Winery, an Industry, and a Life
• The Science of Wine: From Vine to Glass

Do you have a favorite wine-related book you’d like to share? I’m open to suggestions!
Cheers!

Tags: oenology, Pinot Noir, sommelier books, wine & women, wine authors, wine books, wine knowledge, wine reads, women in wine, women of wine

Engaging The Senses, Wine Style

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 | Wine Stories, wine educator | 2 Comments

Smell, Taste, Touch, See - of the 5 senses, these are the most important when it comes to tasting wine.

I’m kind of on a roll these past weeks when it comes to tasting wine in general - tasting meaning engaging your senses to ‘experience’ wine and what it’s all about. I’ve mentioned before that one of the most common question I hear is ‘how does one know what they are experiencing?’ or ‘how do you know what flavors are in the wine’ or ‘where does that flavor come from?’.

I would like to present a challenge to anyone reading this post right now. And this is something I’ve thought long and hard about these few days and weeks. I realized it’s something that I already do, but didn’t quite think to apply it until recently as I’ve been helping a good friend understand what I do about wine.

For the next week, and possibly even two weeks, I challenge you to eat the cleanest foods possible. What I mean is - only whole foods. Buy fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, beans, rice, dark chocolate. Buy fresh and dried herbs and spices.

Don’t add butter, salt, creamy sauces, sugar. Don’t put anything into your mouth that is processed like cookies, pastries, sweets, salad dressings.

If you need to season something, use only olive oil, the herbs and spices or lemon/lime juice on your salads. When you drink tea or coffee, don’t add sugar. Use honey instead in your tea. Drink Lots and Lots of H2O (water for those of you who hated chem class).

Ok, I know this all sounds like some new fad ‘diet’. Well honestly, think of it this way: you’re going to give your tastebuds (and other senses) a vacation. Why? Because they need one. Too many of us are shoving only God-knows-what into our mouths not taking the time to realize what we’re eating and tasting and experiencing. By allowing yourself to reconnect with these things we call ‘food’, I promise you’re going to be more aware of flavors, aromas, the feel of food, and maybe even find that the flavors of some things are much different than you previously thought. When you bite into that peice of chocolate you’re probably going to taste something even richer than imagined. When you make your morning joe, I bet your sense of smell will be awakened.

How many folks do you know that just down a glass of wine? Nobody. You savor it (at least I do), smell it, sometimes close your eyes and think of warming thoughts, or good memories (unless it’s a bad wine and you revert back to college times of bad life choices).

In esence what I’m trying to help you do is pinpoint those things in the wine that are around us everyday in what we eat. You want to know what that smoky flavor is? It’s toasted vanilla oak. Remind you of toasted fresh BREAD perhaps? What about those cocoa flavors? Did you notice how much more pronounced it was on that Syrah after you’ve tasted the pure ingredient?

I’d love to hear back from anyone who tries this. At the end of the week, grab yourself that bottle of wine you’ve been saving for the end, and tell me what you taste. What did you pick out that you never understood before? Can you taste the lemon? the citrus notes? the spice of cinnamon? clove? the green beans on some of those wacky sauvignon blancs? I want to know.

Until then, I’ll be doing what I’m doing and helping you identify those flavors. Cheeers!

Tags: clean eating, food flavors, ingredients, physical senses, whole food diets, wine and food, wine flavors

How Do You Know All This Stuff??

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 | Wine Stories, wine, wine educator | 3 Comments

It’s come to my attention these past few weeks at the winery that folks are ever curious to know how I know so much about wine. And my story is always inevitably a little different. So, I feel it’s about time that I explain a little of my history in the wine world. Here we go:

It all started about 7 years ago…….actually, let me back up to 7th grade French Class. Mrs. Rice was my French teacher who was a tad harsh, but knew her stuff. She was delectably French in so many ways (but not really French). She had this cute little bowl haircut, wore these very ‘teachery’ spectacles and was your mom. She spoke French to us all day long, even in the hallway and would try to get us to use it outside the classroom all the time. One day, she came to us with a project: Pick a Provence in France and report on it to the class. Well, guess what I got? Bordeaux. Yep, little did I know what i was about to throw myself into……at such a young, illegal age. (NO - I didn’t drink any Bordeauxs….I know what you’re thinking. That lusciousness came later.) As many of you may know, the Bordeaux region of France is one of the most well known wine regions in the world and in history.

So here I am standing in front of the classroom with a giant map of Bordeaux talking about all the regions of this part of the world, the Garonne river that feeds most of the land there, Medoc, Haute-Medoc, Graves, the types of grapes grown where, the temperatures, the landscape. Man, I should have ditched my whole dream of engineering right there! I should have been a wine educator!

Back to present day - It all officially started in 2001. I got a job as a hostess at a pretty trendy restaurant in South Norwalk, CT - Barcelona - some of you may have heard of it. Well, the theme of the restaurant was Spanish and tapas and wine were the name of the game. I was 21. So, I hadn’t been drinking for too long, not wine anyway. My night of drinking probably only ever consisted of LI Iced Teas and Beer or Madori Sours (I still wonder why I ever drank those, btw…). I had no idea how delicious Spanish wines were. I would normally sit down each night and have something to eat and try a new wine every night. While I started to know what I liked, whenever I looked at the wine list, it was just a list of nonsensical lines of text. That all changed the day I knew I would start waitressing.

I picked up a copy of Andrea Immer’s “Great Wines Made Simple“. MY EYES HAD BEEN OPENED! I still tell anyone looking to learn a bit about wine to pick up that book! Remember when you were in school and in math and the teacher would show you something on the board and go ‘don’t worry about how this works, it just does. One day you’ll understand why.” Well that’s what I felt when I read that book. I didn’t know that Sauvignon Blanc was a grape! I didn’t know what regions were, let alone how water affects grapes and the flavors….it’s all in there. And it’s not super technical, so you retain a LOT of information in little time.

I walked back into Barcelona after I read that book, grabbed the wine list and felt like I knew almost everything possible about how each wine should taste, and what to expect. It was like I turned into a wine translator or something! (We’ll just leave it at me selling lots of great wines for the next few weeks!). And it didn’t stop there, I was on a mission. Now I wanted to go to Napa. It’s like a pilgrimage for anyone wanting to get into wine (domestically speaking). I went for my 24th birthday and just drove up and down Highway 29 through Oakville, St. Helena, Silverado Trail, Yountville, all the great regions of Napa just tasting and tasting and touring and soaking it all in for 3 days straight. It’s a lot to take in. But like learning a language, the best way to do it is to immerse yourself in the culture. So I did. And I still do.

I will leave it there for now, but I have more to come on this subject…….

In the meantime - my wine recommendation of the week:
Viu Manent Cabernet Reserve 2005
Dark chocolate flavors definitely come out on this wine. But the leather and dark jammy berries are also accentuated, while still relatively dry. Drink with some balsamic grilled NY Strip Steaks! YUM!

Tags: Andrea Immer, Barcelona Wine Bar, Bordeaux wine, Napa, Norwalk, sommelier, Viu Manent