huevos con vino

It’s that time of year again.  It’s the time when wineries start sending out their offer letters for new releases.  I’ve received several such letters recently, from places like Flowers and Titus, and every time I get one of these letters I have the same thought:

Why don’t I have a wine cellar with 2,500-bottle capacity and about $600,000 to spend on wine each year?

I think it’s a fair question.  I mean, I would love to get some Cabernet Franc from Titus, along with their Petit Sirah.  But sheesh…if I buy even one bottle of either of those wines, that means I probably can’t afford much else this month given the state of my finances. 

And then I think about how I’ve got lots of wine to drink already, so maybe I should drink some bottles and clear some space.  But at the same time, I want to save many of these bottles for the years to come.

Ahh, the dilemma of a budding young wine drinker who lives in a third-floor walk-up apartment.  Sheesh.  I’m sure someday when I own a mansion with a wine cave in Sonoma County, I will pine for the days when I lived a simpler life.  Well, maybe not.

Lots of stuff to report.

First, I opened my recently received bottle of Wind River Viognier tonight.  It’s delicious!  Here’s how I’d describe it:

• Aroma: Hints of citrus and melon over a buttery core of ripe grape perfume; very nice.
• Flavor: Full, rich wine with a slightly toasty note combined with a balance of acid and fruit.  Possibly a bit of kiwi on the finish.
• General impression: A very tasty and surprisingly expensive Viognier!  I’m excited to have this wine in my fridge at this point.

Second, the Wind River winery has a blog!  It looks pretty cool so far; kudos to them for running a blog at the same time as they run an entire winery.  I’d love to see more winery blogs.  The process of making wine is fascinating to me, and at this time of year (mid-September) the harvest may well be in full swing at lots of Northwest wineries.

Third, I received a Riedel Vinum Magnum decanter tonight.  Well, my wife and I received it as a wedding present from our albino chef friend.  He called us “gourmands” in his note, which brought a tear to me eye.  The decanter is absolutely gorgeous.  I look forward to using it.  Interestingly, I bought a decanter at Ikea for $14.99 the other night.  It’s nice and big (1.1 liters), it’s dishwasher-safe, and it has a funnel and stainless steel mesh filter.  I guess Ikea was good for something.

Fourth, I went to Costco tonight, which is fairly close to Ikea in terms of how annoying it is.  Between the 12-gallon tubs of mayo and the 36-roll packs of toilet paper, I saw some good wine selections.  Costco is indeed known for their wine selection and I hope they win their lawsuit against the government because it will drive down wine costs somewhat, which has to be good.

Finally, my brother-in-law is moving into a great new apartment building where they’ve got a rooftop deck with a barbecue and tables!  I look forward to many nice barbecues and bottles of wine on the roof.  Better yet, the apartment building has a great supermarket on the ground floor, so we don’t even need to bring the food from home.  We can just saunter downstairs and get more salmon.  Nice.

I finally broke down and subscribed to the professional version of Wine-Searcher.com.  Only $29.99 for 12 months, plus there’s a money-back guarantee as with so many things in life.

I should have done this sooner.

One of the things that sold me on buying a pro subscription was the fact that you can search for wine prices in the past.  For example, my fetish for Sea Smoke values drove me to look up the price history of their 2004 Botella release.  Here’s an interesting snapshot for you (caveat: the Wine-Searcher.com site does not index all available online retailers, so this is an incomplete data set):

• This wine was released for $30/bottle in mid-May, 2006. 
• Today, there are 12 online merchants (excluding auction sites) with 2004 Sea Smoke Botella in stock (750 ml bottles only).

• The lowest price, by far, is $31.99; the next lowest price is $44.99 per bottle.  Those are the two lowest prices.
• The highest price is $89.99, with two different retailers trying their best to gouge their customers at this price.

• The lowest price was $29.99, with two merchants offering the wine at that price and another at $30.50.
• None of these three merchants has this wine on offer today.
• The highest price was nearly a tie: $90 and $89.99 at two merchants.
• The most expensive merchant does not have this wine in stock anymore.  Did they sell out at $90/bottle?

• The lowest price was $27.36, which looks to me like a case-discounted price rather than a per bottle price.
• Three merchants clocked in under $40 ($29.99, $36, $38).
• Again, the highest price was nearly a tie: $90 and $89.99 at two merchants.

• $29.99 and $31.95 were the only two prices below $40/bottle.
• The only price over $70 was $75, and that merchant no longer carried the wine two months ago.

What do all these numbers tell us?  Well, when I look at them, two interesting facts jump out at me:

1. This wine was obtainable at its original sale price to those people who did not receive an allocation; however, the price went up after three months on the market.
2. The range of prices is fairly broad for a $30 bottle of wine.  The current range is, realistically, about $45 from lowest to highest (excluding the outliers); three months ago, the range was the same but it topped out at $75/bottle rather than $90/bottle.

I guess all of this information tells me that I’m glad I bought some Sea Smoke directly from the winery.  The aftermarket costs, while manageable through the right merchant, are prohibitive through most online wine resellers.

One last thing:

• 2004 Sea Smoke Ten currently lists from $75/bottle to $135/bottle; this wine entered the market at $70/bottle.
• Three months ago, the range was from $72.95/bottle to $139.99/bottle.

• That’s about the same as today.
• I excluded an outlying merchant called, appropriately, Cultwine, as they have been offering the same wine at $225/bottle for the past three months.  Ouch.

The new wife and brother-in-law and I went to Ikea tonight.  I hate Ikea.  Here’s why:

Ikea built its image on inexpensive, fairly decent, vaguely trendy furniture.  You can get a dining room table and 4 chairs for about $89 if you try hard enough, and unlike other cheap furniture your dining room will actually look pretty good for under $100.  It’s a great concept.

Now, I’m an information architect, among other things, and I despise the way Ikea designs their store, their instructions, and just about everything else.  But more on that in a bit.

I hate Ikea because it’s like walking into the home furnishings equivalent of a demilitarized zone.  Men stagger around carrying catalogues with dog-eared pages and words like “Sjlubdanic” and “Jerker” circled in black ink.  Women walk around starry-eyed with their husbands, pointing out decorative aluminum stones (Malmsteen, $14.99) and saying, “Oh, honey, those would look great on our new nightstand.”  They haven’t told their husbands yet that they’re getting new nightstands, of course (Bjorgen, $129 each, some assembly required).  That comes 30 minutes later in Section 8b of the store.

I hate Ikea because they have managed to take something with a strong philosophical and ergonomic aesthetic (Scandinavian furniture design), neuter it, brand it, and turn it into a fun family event with convenient parking.  When you walk through the warehouse store, you realize that you don’t have the Terbo picture frame ($24.99) but you could probably use one, and you also realize you need a new set of pots and pans (Kjarlstad, $29.99), and then before you know it you’re at the finish line with a $354.28 charge on your VISA card. 

I hate Ikea because you can spend $354.28 on particle board furniture and feel like you “got a good deal.”

Most of all, I hate Ikea tonight because I bought the Omar.

The Omar is an iron wine rack that holds 4 bottles per shelf and comes with 4 shelves.  It was $29.99, like almost everything else at Ikea.  But this time, they threw me a curve: They neglected to include the bag containing all of the joining pieces within the Omar box.

I got home, all excited to put together my new 16-bottle wine rack, which only cost $29.99 before tax, only to discover that step 1 of the instructions showed the assembly of a bunch of little parts that I didn’t get.  I looked closer and saw that I was missing fully 75% of the parts that are supposed to comprise a completed Omar.  Pretty crappy if you ask me.

So now I hate Ikea because I have to make the 40-minute drive back down to the warehouse store to return this Omar and get a new Omar, which I’m sure will be a hellish process.  Everyone who works at Ikea appears to be either 14 years old or 73 years old.  Perhaps that’s an oddity of the Seattle-area store, but it seems about right. 

Anyway, I’ve got 6 bottles of Radio-Coteau coming in a few weeks, plus 6 more bottles of Domaine Drouhin at about the same time.  I have about 4 other bottles of wine that I need to put down somewhere, if not in the overcrowded wine fridge.  Clearly I need an Omar.  I just wish I had all the right parts to put Omar together.

One of my bachelor party gifts was a bottle of 2004 Page Cellars Syrah.  Page is a local vineyard, located in Woodinville, Washington, where I spent ten long years of my childhood.  I think I would have enjoyed my time there more if I could have consumed wine on a regular basis.

Anyway, I decided to make a bit of room in my wine fridge, so I opened my Page tonight.  For this tasting report, if I can call it that, I’m using the wine aroma wheel developed at UC Davis.  It’s a fun tool to use when you’re, well, a novice like me.  So here we go!

• Aroma: Resinous wood (oak, cedar, vanilla); some phenolic and medicinal aromas as well; black berry fruit in the background, mostly cassis and blackberry.
• Flavor: Strong tannic structure, a very young wine obviously; needed more than 30 minutes of aeration and decanting.  Red currant, black fruit, slight spice on the mid-palate.  Very slight vegetal overtone.  Somewhat smooth overall, but not necessarily as refined as some syrahs that I’ve had.  Thin finish that simply dissipates after showing a lot of heat and black fruit.
• General impression: A good local syrah, needs more time in the bottle and/or in the decanter, though.  I can see where this wine would be good with roasted meat.  With a firm goat cheese, the wine tastes smoother and more balanced.  Generally, though, the wine just doesn’t quite do it for me.

So, I’m glad this wine was a gift, because I would feel slightly ripped off if I had spent $37, which is the asking price.  I would pay $15 for this wine, I think.  We’ll see how it tastes tomorrow as I saved half the bottle for later consumption.

POSTSCRIPT: The day after opening this wine, it was still pretty uninspiring.  I think this wine needed at least a couple more years in the cellar before opening.