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This Month's Featured Varietal: Syrah
Meet our Wine Panel
Kenwood Vineyards
Wine Tasting Notes
Wine Vocabulary
Food Recipe
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Dear Wine Lover,
In case you haven't heard our exciting news, A Taste of California is now officially Wine InsidersTM. Over the last 25 years, we've been building relationships with top wineries all over the world. The insider connections we've developed allow us to bring you outstanding wine. Not just from California, but from around the globe. So we changed our name to better reflect who we are.
You'll also notice we've expanded the scope of this newsletter. You'll find it's packed with insider information to enhance your wine-tasting experience. In this issue we feature a behind-thes cenes look at Kenwood Vineyards and give you an in-depth exploration of Syrah wines. You'll also find tips on making warm mulled wine, perfect for chilly winter nights. Watch for new issues with even more insider information in each shipment we send you.
Enjoy your wine!
Cheers!
John Davis
Founder & Chairman
Meet Our Wine Panel
Wine Insiders explores the world looking for great wines for you. But it’s our expert wine panel who makes sure the wines you drink are up to our exacting standards.
Meeting together and separately, our panel personally samples more than 2,000 of the wines we find each year. They evaluate robust reds and crisp whites from famous wineries and independent winemakers as far away as South America, Europe and Australia. Looking for the perfect combination of taste, quality and value, they select only one wine out of every hundred bottles they sample.
With decades of experience making and understanding wines, our panel members also bring a unique passion to their job. They combine their knowledge of grape
growing, cooking, marketing and even chemistry to evaluate every wine and make sure every bottle you buy will keep you coming back for more.
For a detailed profile of each of our wine panel members, see about us.
Discover the wines of Kenwood Vineyards
Wine InsidersTM has a longstanding relationship with California's Kenwood Vineyards, bringing you some of their best wines for over 20 years.
Since the story behind the wine can be an important part of fully enjoying it, we're taking you on a brief tour of the vineyard and its winemaking philosophy.
Kenwood Vineyards was founded in 1970 by wine enthusiasts from the San Francisco Bay area. They refurbished the former Pagani Brothers Winery, originally established in 1906, and named their new vineyard after the nearby town of Kenwood.
Today, Kenwood Vineyards sits on a beautiful 22-acre estate and uses its own grapes along with grapes from some of Sonoma County's finest vineyards. Using the historic cuvée winemaking method, the harvest from each vineyard is handled separately to preserve its individuality and character.
Housed in Pagani Brothers' original wooden winery building, the Kenwood winery has been modernized with winemaking versatility in mind. More than 125 stainless steel fermenting and upright oak tanks and 14,000 French and American oak barrels give Kenwood the flexibility it needs to produce an impressive range of classic varietal wines.
Cuvée gives complex wines the right balance
Kenwood Vineyards employs the time-honored cuvée method to achieve its distinctive wines. Cuvée is the term used for the initial pressing of a grape, but it's also used to describe the process of keeping each grape variety separate until the end of its aging period. The finished wines are then carefully blended, mixing ages, tastes and aromas to achieve the perfect character balance.
"I call Kenwood the "no frills"winery because they focus on great wines instead of the trappings of a fancy winery." - John Davis,Wine Insiders founder
This Month's Featured Varietal: Syrah
The rich, full-bodied Syrah ranks among the world's most noble wine grapes. Its distinguished lineage traces back to the Rhône valley in France. European wine growers have taken centuries to perfect its production. But California winemakers have caught up quickly, producing Syrahs that can stand up to the best France has to offer.
The Syrah grape thrives in the Mediterranean climates found in the Côtes du Rhône and even California. Plus it's the most widely planted grape in Australia, although it goes by a different name.
Syrah is known for its complex blackberry, plum and pepper flavors. There are often additional notes of licorice, bitter chocolate and mocha with a rustic flavor overtone the French call animale.
Serve it with your most flavorful foods
Syrah pairs well with hearty foods like stew, roast, game and fullflavored cheeses. It's also a great companion to spicy international dishes from India and Mexico.
Syrah or Shiraz?
Shiraz and Syrah are different names for the same grape. In France (where the grape originated) and the U.S., it's called Syrah. In Australia and
parts of South Africa, it's Shiraz. A few California producers use the name Shiraz or identify their wines as "Australian style" to indicate a fruit-forward flavor.
Wine Tasting Notes
Always hold a wine glass by the stem. When you hold it by the heat from your hands can warm the wine and alter its flavor.
As a rule of thumb, serve light wines before heavy wines, dry wines before sweet, and whites before reds. Of course, the only “right” way to enjoy wines is decided by your own personal tastes.
Store your wine horizontally in a cool, dark place. Storing wine bottles on their sides keeps the corks moist, which protects the wine from the elements.
Talk like an insider
This month's wine vocabulary focuses on the relationship between wine and oxygen and the way they combine to give wine its distinctive tastes and smells.
Aroma: The part of the smell of a wine derived specifically from its grape variety, such as Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay.
Bouquet: The part of the smell of a wine derived from the fermentation process, from the woods used in aging and from other sources independent of the grape variety used.
Breathe: To let a wine come in contact with oxygen, either by swirling it in a glass or by pouring it from a bottle to a carafe or a glass. Breathing releases the bouquet and opens up the flavor of a wine, making it more pronounced.
Decanting: Pouring wine slowly from a bottle into a carafe. Decanting is done slowly so as not to disturb any sediment. Plus it adds oxygen, which can release flavors and scents. Nose: Another word for bouquet.
Oxidation: The result of too much oxygen in a wine. It causes the color to change and makes the wine lifeless and unpleasant.
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