Watkins Glen and Chateau Ste Michelle Party in the Summer Heat

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:28:41 +0000

It's HOT! In fact, climatologists predict that 2010 will be the hottest year on record worldwide, due in large part to El Nino, the tropical climate pattern that warms the Pacific every five to seven years. But, that didn't stop the folks at the Finger Lakes Wine Festival this weekend in Watkins Glen, NY. In fact the Finger Lakes are doing very well in the heat. Winemakers in the region are enjoying advanced ripening in the vineyards this year, compared to the wet, challenging season of 2009. More time on the vine in hot, dry weather may give winemakers a chance to quiet a few more critics of Finger Lakes red wine. But, it's doing great things for Riesling. Global warming has been a boon for Riesling, according to last week's Riesling Rendezvous conference in Seattle. The conference, hosted by Ernie Loosen, Decanter's Man of the Year 2005, and Ted Baseler, the president of Chateau Ste Michelle, was attended by well over 350 professionals from all over the world. Speakers suggested that warmer temperatures worldwide were opening up new regions for Riesling and guaranteeing consistency in more traditional regions, although in time growers will be forced to adapt, or move. Temperatures in classical growing regions such as the Rheingau, Wachau and Alsace have risen by just over 1 degree in the past 30 years, producing a welcome consistency in quality there. At the same time temperature increases have stimulated a rise in production in areas less well known for Riesling, such as the Finger Lakes in New York, Niagara in Ontario and the Old Mission Peninsula in Michigan. And the folks in the Finger Lakes are celebrating appropriately. Once a year, Watkins Glen International transforms from The Soul of American Road Racing into the Finger Lake’s largest wine tasting room, where over 600 New York wines are sampled. The celebration kicked-off Friday, July 16th, with fireworks, wine, and togas at “Yancey’s Fancy Cheese Launch of the Lakes.” Saturday and Sunday the Festival featured a variety of wine, food, arts and crafts from across the state, culinary classes, cooking demonstrations, wine seminars, the Brewer's Garden, pace car rides, comedy, and live musical entertainment. Of special significance was the Riedel Experience which included a private Sensory Exploration class with Georg Riedel, 10th generation and former CEO of the legendary wine-glass-making company. And a special 5 pc Riedel Vinum XL Tasting Set featuring the Finger Lakes exclusive Riesling glass as a souvenir. Not to be outdone, Chateau Ste Michelle's Summer Concert Series continues until the end of September and will include musical artists like Martina McBride, Ringo Starr, the B-52's and Harry Connick Jr. Enjoy the fresh air, delicious wine and perhaps a picnic dinner while listening to live music from your favorite band.

This is a post from: The Wine Cellar Blog

Empress Josephine’s Wine Cellar

admin — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:01:29 +0000

Bordeaux wine lovers may credit the 1855 Exposition Universelle de Paris and Emperor Napoleon III's "Official Classification" with putting Bordeaux wine on the map. But, it turns out that his grandmother the Empress Josephine, first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte may have ignited French passion for the wine. Prior to Josephine raising the status of Bordeaux to an elixer fit for nobility, it was seen as an inferior product suitable only for the English who had been stubborn lovers of claret, or red Bordeaux wine, for four centuries. At the time of the French Revolution, Burgundy and Champagne reigned supreme, in fact, not a single bottle of Bordeaux is known to have been kept in the wine cellars of King Louis XVI. When Marie-Josephe-Rose de Tascher de La Pagerie (aka Empress Josephine) died in 1814, she left a heap of unpaid bills and a golden legacy to social historians. Marie-Josephe-Rose, was among other things, a great connoisseur and collector of clothes, and an innovative gardener and botanist. The written inventory of her final possessions at her chateau west of Paris has inspired studies and exhibitions on subjects as varied as the fashion trends and gardening styles of the early 19th century. Josephine was also a celebrated hostess and, although not a great drinker, a great collector of wine. The official inventory of her possessions at her death includes more than 13,000 bottles of wine from all over the world, from Cyprus, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal as well as South Africa and Hungary. The empress also kept hundreds of bottles of rum from her native Martinique, which she used in rum punches and served at dinner parties in gilded bowls. Josephine's chambermaid described her as a "very sober woman." She was partial to very sweet wines including champagne, but drank it all with moderation – like Napoleon. The Emperor Napoleon's favorites were Burgundy and Champagne, but he also grew fond of South African wines during his time in exile on Saint Helena, the South Atlantic island where he died in 1821 at age 52 – not far from Cape Town. Study of Josephine's 1814 "wine list" reveals something that may seem unsurprising but was, at the time, extraordinary. Almost half of her bottles and barrels came from vineyards around Bordeaux, little known chateaux that later would become some of the greatest names in wine: Latour, Lafite, Margaux and Haut-Brion. Was the Empress Josephine the cause of the great switch in French wine tastes which allowed the vineyards of Bordeaux, and especially the great chateaux of the Medoc, to emerge by the mid-19th century as the most prized wines in France and the world? This is one of the subjects explored in an entertaining exhibition, La Cave de Josephine (Josephine's Cellar), which has started at the Chateaux de Malmaison, where Josephine lived for the last 15 years of her life, and died in June 1814, aged 50. The exhibition, which will move to Germany and Italy next year, also examines other changes in the art de vivre of the French nobility which followed the fall of the monarchy. Before the Revolution, an aristocratic French dinner-party was a kind of immense, stand-up buffet in which all dishes were served at once. Wine glasses were kept on trays by servants and topped up as required. After the revolution, France gradually adopted the "Russian" style, now universal, of serving different, sit-down courses one after another. Wine glasses began, to be placed permanently on the table. These changes were driven partly by the post-Revolutionary lack of legions of low-paid servants. France had also finally cracked the "industrial secret" of how to make crystal wine glasses, something previously known only to the British.

This is a post from: The Wine Cellar Blog

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Watkins Glen and Chateau Ste Michelle Party in the Summer Heat

Empress Josephine’s Wine Cellar