So ABC News is reporting that Aussie wines are supplanting Italian wines as the number one exporter to the US. 
I guess this really isn’t a surprise given the similarity in style between Aussie wines and US wine, in particular CA wines. If you think about it the big, fruity CA wines that most Americans learn to love are very analogous to Aussie wines. In fact, if you’re into CA wines and are thinking of expanding to another region I definitely recommend checking out Aussie wines and even some South American wines as places to start. Get to know the region, weather, history, etc… then taste wine and compare them to similar CA wines. Try a Chilean Chardonnay versus a CA Chard. Or an Aussie Cab versus a Napa Cab. That is a big upside to knowing the varietal – you can ‘reverse engineer’ the tastes and get to know the region! Great way to learn about the wine life!
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WBW #8 – Vini Siciliani Rossi was announced for April 13th and will be hosted by LoveSicily.com. The topic is going to be a bit of a challenge for somm but you can probably guess that its Sicilian reds. This should be a learning experience for Kelly and I seeing as we’re not really big on the Italian reds. Should be fun!
Of course, for those that don’t know, Wine Blogging Wednesday is the Internet’s premier monthly Virtual Wine Tasting event. Bloggers post their tastings on their sites and let the host know who, in turn, posts the summary on their site. Its open to bloggers and non-bloggers alike. For any non-blogger, you can either e-mail you tasting directly to the host or go ahead and post a comment here and I’ll post it with Vivi’s entry to the wine tasting event.
Here are the reviews from last week.
Collectively, the wine blogs of the world represent a little less “high and mighty” and more of an approachable view of wines they’ve tasted. In fact, they often rebuke “the establishment” of wine. More approachable wine discussions are good for everyone. Wine Blogs of the world make good reading and more often then not they find some smaller winery wines that may get overlooked elsewhere.
Enjoy the Wine Life!
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OK, I think its going a little overboard now. Medical News Today is reporting that a study by a Yale School of Medicine researcher published in the Journal of American College of Surgeons shows drinking two to three glasses of red wine daily is good for the heart.
You have to start to worry about this doctor’s recommendations.
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Tired of the ring of wine that gets on the counter or table while serving wine? You know, because a drip got down the neck of the bottle while you were socializing at a party. There are nice drip rings you can buy and other accessories and for formal dining occasions they’re probably the right way to go. But for bigger parties a paper towel is all you need! Simple, fast, and cheap. So you can mingle without worrying about the ring-around-the-counter.
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This weekend Kelly and I went to Rhone Rangers tasting event in San Francisco. The Rhone Rangers is a group of wine enthusiasts that organized and created a mission which, according to their site, is:
The Rhone Rangers is a non-profit, educational organization, established to advance the public’s knowledge of the Rhone varietal wine grapes grown in America and the production and enjoyment of these wines with emphasis on integration into our daily lives.
This is great. A basic marketing engine organized and run by anyone with an interest, business or otherwise, in Rhone varietal wines. They have all sorts of events and you can check their sitefor more detail. Plus, they also usually have a charity component to their events, so thats a positive point.
The wine tasting event itself took place this weekend and featured 130+ wine makers showcasing their Rhone varietals. We made some notes of 20 some-odd wines that we tasted but I think I want to focus a bit on what an event like this is like in terms of its part in the wine lifestyle. How do you optimize your fun at one of these monster tasting events?
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Sorry for the radio silence…sometimes life events and work crowd the schedule a bit. Pesky work 
So I’ve said before that wine blogs are a great source of discovering smaller wine producers that remain largely overlooked by the large magazines that, quite frankly, don’t have the bandwidth to deal with all vintages and varietals from all wineries. If you’re a publisher of a wine blog, however, you are part of a wine blog-based army of tasters going out and tasting wines from all sorts of producers and, more often than not, finding gems that have never been written about.
So now I’m going to put forth one that is a bit of an unknown quantity. Ballentine Vineyards - a small producer established in 1993 on 100 acres in St. Helena that produces less than 10,000 cases a year of Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Zinfandel, Syrah, Chenin Blanc, and a Cab Franc/Merlot blend called Bg Integrity. When I say small, I mean small. They employ about 7 people and one day the sales/pr/spokesperson/jack-of-all-trades Mesha Provo contacted me to tell me about their newly released Chenin Blanc. After speaking to her I asked why she was small and why they haven’t scaled up the operation. Her response was that Van and Betty Ballentine have a simple philosophy of “we like it small so we want it to stay that way.” While I can’t speak for their consistency of great wine making, I will say that the Kelly and I did a Ballentine Week and made notes each night of a different wine and we were pretty impressed overall.
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Quick post on a charitable wine event for a good cause. 29th Annual San Francisco Wine Auction is April 29th. All proceeds of this charitable event go to the Guardsmen General Fund to support indoor and outdoor educational programs for disadvantaged Bay Area youth.
Don’t like to plug on the blog particularly because I get alot of requests from event planners, but when you have talent like Michael Mina donating his time for a good cause I’ll let you know because not only will it benefit charity but you’ll get a great meal out of it as well.
I’ll be on a short Vegas vacation starting in about 3 hours. So my posts this weekend will either be non-existent or non-coherent. I’d love to say that I’ll be drinking many fine wines and writing up tasting notes but I don’t think that would be realistic 
. You see, this weekend is “guy’s weekend out”. Once a year we head down to Vegas for “golf”. The trip is three days long and we generally get about 9 holes in (they serve Vodka Tonics on the snack carts 
). Now everyone should calm down, Kelly gets her girls weekends with her friends and 99% of the time there is never anyone I would ever want to do anything with more than Kelly. Beyond being my wife, she truly is my closest friend. But there are some things that you need to do with “the guys” 
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