Vinography: a wine blog

The thought of being trapped underground for any length of time is enough to send some people off the deep end. The thought of being trapped underground for 3 months without any wine is a whole different ball game.

In the event you missed the news, an underground landslide has trapped 33 Chilean miners about 700 meters underground since August 5th. Already the group has been trapped longer than any other in history. The miners are miraculously in good health and reasonably good spirits. One of them has proposed to his girlfriend. They've made videos for the world. They're getting vitamins, food, and anti-depressants.

But apparently they won't be getting any wine, despite specifically requesting it.

Now, there may very well be some very good reason why these guys shouldn't have any wine, but notwithstanding some dire threat to their welfare as a result (dehydration? rash decisions under the influence) it certainly seems like it would be the humane thing to do to pour some Carmenere down their little supply tube.

If they can't take a shower, at least let them have a glass of wine.

Read the full story.

Winemaker's Cottage
This is a photograph of the cottage where the winemaker for J. Bouchon winery lives in Chile's Maule Valley. I never really imagine myself as a winemaker or winegrower (I'd much rather just drink the stuff, and I tend to kill plants) but if I were so inclined, I'd definitely want to live in the middle of my vineyards. It seems to me that if you are going to tie your livelihood to plants, and if you aspire to grow them to the peak of perfection, you should live with them for as much of your day as possible. Of course, it would help if your vineyards were in as beautiful a landscape as these. -- Alder Yarrow

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ABOUT VINOGRAPHY IMAGES:
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Winemaker's Cottage
This is a photograph of the cottage where the winemaker for J. Bouchon winery lives in Chile's Maule Valley. I never really imagine myself as a winemaker or winegrower (I'd much rather just drink the stuff, and I tend to kill plants) but if I were so inclined, I'd definitely want to live in the middle of my vineyards. It seems to me that if you are going to tie your livelihood to plants, and if you aspire to grow them to the peak of perfection, you should live with them for as much of your day as possible. Of course, it would help if your vineyards were in as beautiful a landscape as these. -- Alder Yarrow

INSTRUCTIONS:
Download this image by right-clicking on the image and selecting "save link as" or "save target as" and then select the desired location on your computer to save the image. Mac users can also just click the image to open the full size view and drag that to their desktops.

To set the image as your desktop wallpaper, Mac users should follow these instructions, while PC users should follow these.

PRINTS:
If you are interested in owning a print of this image please contact photographer Matt Wilson through his web site.

ABOUT VINOGRAPHY IMAGES:
Vinography regularly features images by photographer Matt Wilson for readers' personal use as desktop backgrounds or screen savers. We hope you enjoy them. Please respect the copyright on these images.

There are a few categories of wine that qualify for the designation of "I just don't drink nearly enough of this stuff" in my house, and one of the top candidates is German Riesling. When it's good, it's just so damn good. It goes so well with food, and it makes you happy. What's not to love?

Of course, to the uninitiated (and that applied to me about six years ago) it can be an intimidating landscape to navigate. The inscrutable labels, the different levels of sweetness, the unfamiliar quality designations -- they all contribute to an unease for many wine lovers that I remember well. Luckily, I got over my fear and learned enough to navigate my way through the forest of umlauts and hard consonants, and have been rewarded with experiencing some of the most delicious wines on the planet.

This particular bottle is a near-perfect example of everything good that German Riesling has to offer, thanks to its legendary producer, fantastic vineyard site, and classic flavors.

The name on the label is one of the most well known in Germany's Mosel Valley, and even the country as a whole. The Loosen family has owned and farmed vineyards on the steep riverbanks for more than two centuries. The doctor on the label is one Ernst Loosen, who assumed control of his family's vineyard in 1988, and quite single-handedly took the estate to an entirely new level of quality in the three decades since.

Loosen had the good fortune to be working with some of the best possible raw materials on the planet. The Loosen family vineyards are some of the oldest and most distinctive vineyard plots in Germany, among which the vineyard that produced this wine, the Ürziger Würzgarten, may be the most superlative.

Translated to English, the vineyard's name means the Spice Garden of Ürzig, Ürzig being the little village that sits below the vineyard at the water's edge. Containing some of the oldest vines (some exceeding 120 years of age) owned by the Loosens, this vineyard is a mindbogglingly steep slope of bright red rock that sweeps up from the river's edge in a shallow bowl. Impossible to work mechanically, and dangerous to work manually, getting fruit out of this vineyard can only be described as a labor of love. It takes somewhere between 1000 and 1500 man-hours per acre each year to maintain the vineyard, whose old vines (many of which predate the phylloxera epidemic that wiped out nearly all of Europe's vineyards) yield precious little fruit.

The vineyard, like all of Loosen's Mosel vineyards, is farmed organically, and painstakingly by hand. The elimination of all chemical fertilizers and pesticides was one of Loosen's first decisions in his quest to elevate the quality of his family's wines. Likewise, the cellar techniques have been reduced to their most fundamental, with as little mechanical or chemical intervention in the winemaking as possible.

This wine is classified as a spätlese, which literally translates to "late harvest" and which means that the grapes used to make it were picked at least seven days after the normal harvest that would have yielded a dry, kabinett level wine. Confusingly the spätlese designation does not technically guarantee anything about the level of sweetness in the bottle, only that the grapes were a little extra ripe when they were picked. In practice, however, German spätlese, in particular, tend to be lightly to moderately sweet, this wine being no exception.

Dr. Loosen is now one of the most consistent and high-quality producers in the Mosel, and this is one of my favorite wines from his portfolio (the other being the spätlese from the fabulous Wehlener Sonnenuhr vineyard). I highly recommend it to anyone, from those looking to dip their toe into German Riesling, to those like me who can't seem to find enough excuses to drink the stuff.

This 2008 vintage wine has just been released globally, and may take a little time before being more widely available.

Full disclosure: this wine was sent to me as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Near colorless in the glass, this wine smells of lychee, ripe pear, and honeysuckle flowers. In the mouth, a wonderful silky texture marries with bright mandarin orange, pear, and honeysuckle fruit flavors, a light sweetness, and a crackling mineral undertone that does, true to name, yield to a light spiciness. Fantastically balanced, this wine keeps on giving through a very long finish. Effortless to drink.

Food Pairing:
I'd love to drink this wine with any sort of Vietnamese food, like Vietnamese noodle bowl and Imperial Rolls.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $38

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Many of you had a lot of things to say a couple of months ago when I wrote a post entitled Who Should Be in the Vintners Hall of Fame? It was great to see such a passionate tide of enthusiasm for inducting various winemakers and historical wine personalities.

Those of us that make up the nominating committee talked a lot about many of the names suggested, and about many of the names that weren't suggested, and after much debate and voting, we've come up with the names for this years ballot.

That ballot has been mailed out to the wine writers in the Culinary Institute of America's database and the voting has begun.

The full details on who is on the ballot and some wise words about those who perhaps didn't get on the ballot have been published by my colleague Blake Gray on his fine blog The Gray Market Report. Those of you who felt strongly about the ballot are welcome to offer your thoughts and criticisms on this year's candidates.

And if you are a professional wine writer and you haven't received a ballot, you should definitely let Blake know.

See this year's candidates for election into the Vintners Hall of Fame on The Gray Market Report.

I absolutely love the fact that we've reached a point in this country where I don't need to explain why a sake tasting in San Francisco or New York might be an enjoyable way to spend an evening. In the six and a half years since I've been writing this blog, sake has gone from obscure to obvious, hardly known to hip. The availability and visibility of sake in the US has blossomed, driving by fine dining establishments and the increasing popularity of all things Japanese.

Despite this, however, the average wine lovers' knowledge of sake is extremely limited, mostly by virtue of not having tasted very much sake side-by-side in comparison with one another. And that of course, is where the Joy of Sake comes in. This tasting event, the largest public sake tasting outside of Japan, is much more than just an opportunity to compare a few sakes. Nowhere outside of Japan do consumers have the opportunity to sample so many different, and so many high quality sakes as they do at this event. For anyone truly interested in sake, this tasting cannot be missed.

Hundreds of different sakes are on offer, including the dozens of gold and silver medal winners from the annual U.S. National Sake Appraisal, a competition held each year in Hawaii. Dozens of local restaurants serve up sake friendly food to accompany the brews, which are sampled by attendees using the traditional eyedroppers to fill their glasses.

The one difference between the Joy of Sake tasting and a normal wine tasting event has to do with the information that is available to the curious taster. While there are volunteers whose job it is primarily to make sure that the reservoir cups of sake don't run dry, these folks have an extremely inconsistent knowledge of what they're actually pouring. Unlike a large public wine tasting where the folks behind the table are informed about their particular wine, there is little or no information available about these sakes, should you fall in love with any of them, or have questions about what you are tasting.

Despite this lack of information, the event can be an incredible education to the attentive palate, and is always a great reminder to me of just how much great sake there is out there to be experienced.

For the second year, San Francisco has gotten the short end of the stick for this sake tasting. While the New York event seems to offer the usual selection of hundreds of sakes, the San Francisco event is billed as the Sake Soiree, and it is being held again at Yoshi's nightclub and restaurant, which is cramped and hot and noisy. To add insult to injury they've changed it from 3.5 hours to just three hours, and have raised the price $15 to $65 a person.

This is still an event worth going to for San Franciscans, especially those who are fans of sake or want to learn about it, but I recommend going early especially if you want to get some food.

JOY OF SAKE 2010

September 23rd, New York City
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
82 Mercer Street
New York, NY 10003
888-799-7242

Tickets are $65 per person for San Francisco and $90 for New York and can be purchased in advance online. The price goes up at the door.

Sake tasting is even harder work than wine tasting, as sake is higher in alcohol and much more subtle in flavor. I recommend snacking your way through the tasting to keep your palate fresh. Maddeningly, in the past years they have not provided spit buckets with any regularity, so I recommend bringing your own spit cup or bottle if you are a serious taster. And if you truly consider yourself the latter, I also recommend bringing a small white wine glass, the better to appreciate the aromas.

Those of you who know me well understand the soft spot I have in my heart for iconoclastic winemakers. The crazier the better, in my book, but at the very least, so steadfastly committed to their idea of what makes for great wine that they're willing to persist in their quest even when everyone else says they are nuts.

And that's exactly what most people said when they spotted Josh Jensen driving up and down California in his beat-up Volkswagen stopping here and there to get out of the car and sprinkle hydrochloric acid on the ground -- even those who were able to figure out what it was he was doing.

Jensen was looking for limestone. And a lot of it. Several million tons, to be exact. It was the secret ingredient that made the great Burgundies of the world what they were, and Jensen wanted to make wine that was just as good.

It was 1971, and Jensen had just finished working two harvests in Burgundy at Domaine de la Romanee Conti, and Domaine Dujac. Thanks to his father and some generous friends, Jensen had been drinking top Burgundies since before he was legally able, and despite an education that might have sent him into academia (Yale undergrad, Masters in Anthropology at Oxford), Jensen was in love with wine, and though his prospects better there than looking for a tenure track position somewhere.

That was before he started looking for several million tons of limestone close to the surface in California (a state with very little of it to begin with). Jensen's challenge was compounded by the fact that he not only needed a lot of limestone, but he needed it in a place with decent weather for grapes (e.g. not Death Valley), and he needed to be able to buy the land.

The wacko winemakers of the world that I love are nothing if not persistent. Eventually Jensen found his limestone, in a place that even thirty years later still feels like the middle of freaking nowhere.

Jensen found an old limestone quarry high in the Gavilan Mountains on the side of a peak named Mount Harlan, about 30 miles south of the town of Hollister. He bought 324 acres, and planted a few acres of Pinot Noir, before he had electricity, running water, or even a proper road to the property. He named his winery Calera, Spanish for lime kiln, the remains of which he found on the property, and eventually restored. The first few years were hard going, but eventually, in 1978, Jensen harvested his first couple of barrels of Pinot Noir and has never looked back.

Over the past three decades, few winemakers in California could possibly compete with Jensen for fidelity to an original vision of what kind of wine they wanted to make. In those three decades, the only concession to modernity that Jensen has allowed is the addition of a mechanical crusher-destemmer to his operation. Apart from that he continues to make Pinot Noir the way he learned to in Burgundy: perfectly ripe, meticulously farmed grapes; whole cluster fermentation with native yeasts in small vats, punched down by hand; aging for at least 16 months, in French oak (of which only about 30% is new) and then bottling without any filtration.

In 1990 Jensen's patch of limestone (and about 7000 acres surrounding it) were granted the status of being an American Viticultural Area, but by then most people who cared about California Pinot Noir already had heard of the winemaker up on the mountain who was making some of the best Pinot Noir to be found outside of Burgundy.

Remarkably, that is still true today. Calera's single vineyard Pinot Noirs are some of the best around, yet more so than any other wine of their caliber, they are reasonably easy to find, and priced within the reach of mere mortals -- something to do with the fact that they don't have the words Sonoma or Napa anywhere on the label.

As further proof of his foresight and vision, Jensen has also long had a deep library program, meaning that older vintage wines are still available to purchase, in case you need to prove to yourself that his wines will last 15 years without blinking an eye.

Jensen often brings along these older vintages to tastings, where lucky folk like myself get a chance to taste them.

If you have not had a chance to taste the single vineyard wines of Calera, you are missing out on some of the most distinctive and characterful Pinot Noirs made in America. I recommend them highly.

Tasting Notes:
Bright ruby and orange in the glass with a bright amber color at the rim, this wine smells delightfully of red apple skin, river mud, and a sort of unspecific potpourri of spices. In the mouth, the wine distinguishes itself with two remarkable characteristics. The first is the sheer muscle of the voluminous tannins that still give a tensile structure to the wine, even as they are suede-soft in their feel against the edges of the mouth and tongue. The second is the bright acidity that still holds in suspension flavors of red apple skin, raisins, dried cherries and cedar. These flavors, poised as they are in very fine balance, linger through the very long finish with notes of cocoa powder.

Food Pairing:
Wines like this are often fun to appreciate on their own, if only to watch them shift and change in the glass with air and time, but if I were trying to find something to eat to complement the wine, I might opt for a classic tea-smoked duck from a little hole in the wall Shanghainese restaurant.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $60

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Food and Wine Magazine knows when it's onto a good thing. Building on the success of the long running and incredibly popular Aspen Food and Wine Classic, the magazine (actually it's publisher, American Express) has branched out to bring a similar, if somewhat abbreviated version to South Beach in Florida, and has become a major sponsor of the Pebble Beach Food and Wine event in Carmel, California

And now Food and Wine magazine has launched the Taste of Beverly Hills, a four-day extravaganza of food, wine, cocktails and music at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Attendees to the event will have the opportunity to taste food from many of LA's top restaurants; watch cooking demonstrations by big-name chefs and cocktail mixing demos by top mixologists; taste wine from more than 80 different wineries (including some really excellent ones); and more.

Some of my readers have complained in the past about the quality of wine and food festivals in the Los Angeles area, so I would expect this event to set a new bar for both the quality of food and the quality of the logistics. The event also features a lot of music, a nice touch to complement all the food and wine.

Consult the event web site for lots of information about the schedule of events, which celebrity chefs will be in attendance, and more.

The Inaugural Taste of Beverly Hills
September 2-5, 2010
Behind the Beverly Hilton
9900 Wilshire Blvd.
Beverly Hills 90210 (map)

Tickets start at $150, with various VIP passes available for all events and special access. They should be purchased in advance online.

Valet parking for $30 will be available at the Beverly Hilton, and self-parking will be available in Century City for $12 with a free parking shuttle.

Southern Pinot
One of my greatest regrets from my trip to Chile last year was that I didn't have the time to get down to the tiny region of Biobio to check out one of the new frontiers of extreme winegrowing. One of the most southerly winegrowing regions in the world, this small, cool appellation has begun to yield some very interesting fruit, but perhaps of most interest is the Pinot Noir, shown here in all its Fall harvest glory. There aren't many wineries down in Biobio, but many top producers are starting to put in vineyards there, so it won't be long now. -- Alder Yarrow

INSTRUCTIONS:
Download this image by right-clicking on the image and selecting "save link as" or "save target as" and then select the desired location on your computer to save the image. Mac users can also just click the image to open the full size view and drag that to their desktops.

To set the image as your desktop wallpaper, Mac users should follow these instructions, while PC users should follow these.

PRINTS:
If you are interested in owning a print of this image please contact photographer Matt Wilson through his web site.

ABOUT VINOGRAPHY IMAGES:
Vinography regularly features images by photographer Matt Wilson for readers' personal use as desktop backgrounds or screen savers. We hope you enjoy them. Please respect the copyright on these images.

Perhaps as unlikely as it may seem, one of the keys to my appreciation of wine lies in an esoteric principle at the heart of Japanese culture and philosophy.

The 18 months I spent living in Japan were among the most intense of my life, and some of the most rewarding. I developed a deep appreciation for many aspects of the Japanese culture (not to mention the food), even at the limited level of understanding I was able to cultivate without speaking the language beyond the first-grade-level tourist vocabulary I attained by the time I left.

In particular, I am fascinated by the aesthetic principles that find their intersection in Japanese gardens, traditional wood architecture, and the ritual and philosophy of the tea ceremony. In these three arts, the Japanese have created a vocabulary that I find much more suited to describing some of wine's most ineffable qualities than we posses in English.

Before I can talk about how that vocabulary is meaningful to me, however, I need to share some background on how I think about experiencing wine. So bear with me a moment.

Talking about wine in any language is difficult. I will admit to having fantasized at times (OK, frequently) about being a synaesthete -- someone who, by virtual of some unique wiring, perceives some things with an unusual combination of senses, such as hearing sounds as particular colors. I fantasize that if I had such an ability, it would be easier to describe and talk about wine, and more importantly, to experience it in a more profound way.

Words are blocky and difficult to wrangle into semblances of meaning that approach what I enjoy in wine. Despite a somewhat established vocabulary for the discipline, in order to capture anything about wine that transcends the clinical, we must resort to metaphor and symbolism, as we struggle to express an experience that is, at best, only partly linguistic.

While the deconstruction of wine into its components plays a role in its critical evaluation, and for some, its enjoyment (just like those who enjoy picking out the melody line of a single instrument in a symphony), wine also offers the opportunity to be understood in the context of a singular experience, or a sum total, if you will. Of course, we experience wine in a series of shifting and fluid experiences, from the moment we first smell it to the moments in which the taste still lingers after a swallow, and everything in between. Our perception of a wine shifts and changes through the various mechanical aspects of sipping and swallowing, and over the course of time in the glass. Just as we see a landscape, a painting, or an oriental rug not in a single glance, but in a series of rapid, infinitesimal twitches of our eye (the technical term is saccades) that our brain stitches together for us, so too is my sense of a wine made up of little bursts of perception and memory that fuse together into a "sensibility" of what that wine is all about.

At some point, though, and not necessarily at a fixed and predictable point in this experience, we often have a sense of the wine as a whole. It might be after a full glass, it might be at the end of the meal, taking the last sips of the wine before leaving the table, it might be days later in reflection. But if we're considered, and attentive to the wine, there is some moment that we can apprehend it as a whole.

It is at this moment of appreciation for a wine that I have come to appreciate and understand the beauty of the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, and its ability to capture a complexity that we cannot easily express in our own English language and our vocabulary of beauty.

Notoriously difficult to translate, wabi-sabi lies at the heart of the Japanese aesthetic philosophy (which is itself closely tied to Zen Buddhism), and to a certain extent, the traditional Japanese culture. The words were originally strung together in the context of the aesthetics of the tea ceremony, an art form which profoundly influences many aspects of the Japanese culture.

The entry for the term in Wikipedia does a nice job at an attempted definition:

From an engineering or design point of view, "wabi" may be interpreted as the imperfect quality of any object, due to inevitable limitations in design and construction/manufacture especially with respect to unpredictable or changing usage conditions; then "sabi" could be interpreted as the aspect of imperfect reliability, or limited mortality of any object, hence the etymological connection with the Japanese word sabi, to rust....

Wabi sabi can change our perception of our world to the extent that a chip or crack in a vase makes it more interesting and gives the object greater meditative value. Similarly materials that age such as bare wood, paper and fabric become more interesting as they exhibit changes that can be observed over time.

For me wabi-sabi is a fusion of several tensions -- harmony and dissonance, new and old, sculpted and organic -- as well as the emotional state of wistful reflection that these tensions produce.

I wrote some time ago about the concept of honesty in wine, and wabi sabi is at a level deeper still. The wines that I find I am most drawn to, that compel my attention as I appreciate them as a whole, evoke the notion of wabi-sabi.

These are wines that are not symmetrical, nor polished perfectly smooth. They have rough edges. They do not follow a formula. They do not harmonize in major chords, they have a faint minor key to them. They show their patina of age, or in the roughness of their youth they choose not to obscure their rawness with anything, but leave it bare to my palate.

Wines that are wabi-sabi evoke something deeper than flavors, deeper even than a place. Wabi-sabi involves a deep connection with reality, in a way that is unvarnished, but also rich and profound in its intimacy. And this is what I find in the most magical wines.

Of course, not all great wines embody this aesthetic principle, and nor should they. And I am certainly not dogmatic in my quest to drink only such wines. Some wines are profound and equally pleasurable for other reasons, even those that can be said to be truly the opposite of wabi-sabi in their fresh, vibrant purity, or their lush, rich opulence.

There is also presumably such a thing as too much wabi-sabi, though I have yet to experience such a surfeit in my life. Instead I merely savor those moments when I can take another sip of a wine, close my eyes, and experience that poignant sense of mortality, beauty, and imperfection that is evoked by the wine, but ultimately lives within me.

I've long said that wine helps me maintain my sanity. Well it turns out I may have been more right than I know. Researchers have recently discovered that while it doesn't necessarily make me smarter (damn!), it may help me stave off dementia or whatever special breed of insanity waits for me in my old age. Chalk up another superpower for wine.

Of course like all studies, this one has its limitations. Thankfully it wasn't performed on lab rats, but actually featured real people. Norweigans, specifically -- about 5000 of them. So the surest way to make sure that your cognitive abilities don't decline in old age would be to move to Norway, drink a lot of wine, and presumably eat lots of Lutefisk.

Interestingly, the study suggested that wine consumption only aided women's cognitive function (and beer consumption had negative effects) both wine and beer consumption enhanced men's cognitive function over time.

And the men of the world rejoiced.

The real question is whether or not the study is more broadly applicable beyond Norway, but just to be safe, I'm going to keep drinking wine. How about you?

Read the full story.

I'm up in the heart of California's Lake County, in the Guenoc Valley, in the process of tasting somewhere around 150 different Lake County wines over the next 36 hours. I'm a judge at the second annual People's Choice Wine Awards here in Lake County.

This event is fairly unique as wine competitions go. A panel of judges picks a group of top wines in several categories, and then about a month later, they are showcased blind at an event for the public, and the top wine in each category is selected by popular vote.

I'm participating as a judge for a couple of reasons. The first, and most important, is that while I've tasted a good deal of Lake County wine, my experience with the region is far from comprehensive. This exercise will give me a broad benchmark for understanding what's going on in Lake County and the quality of the wines being made.

I'm also participating to support what I think is a very interesting and progressive wine competition, as such things go. As you know, I'm no fan of the medal system when it comes to wine competitions, especially those from the state fairs. This wine competition sensibly does away with all that, and then lets consumers be the final judges in a big blind tasting. I think that's a great approach, and one that more wine competitions should take.

I look forward to sharing my thoughts on the wines (here's a sneak preview: why aren't more people making Roussanne, Marsanne, and Viognier up here !?), and I am tweeting as we go through, so check out my twitter feed if you're interesting in following along.

I'm up in the heart of California's Lake County, in the Guenoc Valley, in the process of tasting somewhere around 150 different Lake County wines over the next 36 hours. I'm a judge at the second annual People's Choice Wine Awards here in Lake County.

This event is fairly unique as wine competitions go. A panel of judges picks a group of top wines in several categories, and then about a month later, they are showcased blind at an event for the public, and the top wine in each category is selected by popular vote.

I'm participating as a judge for a couple of reasons. The first, and most important, is that while I've tasted a good deal of Lake County wine, my experience with the region is far from comprehensive. This exercise will give me a broad benchmark for understanding what's going on in Lake County and the quality of the wines being made.

I'm also participating to support what I think is a very interesting and progressive wine competition, as such things go. As you know, I'm no fan of the medal system when it comes to wine competitions, especially those from the state fairs. This wine competition sensibly does away with all that, and then lets consumers be the final judges in a big blind tasting. I think that's a great approach, and one that more wine competitions should take.

I look forward to sharing my thoughts on the wines (here's a sneak preview: why aren't more people making Roussanne, Marsanne, and Viognier up here !?), and I am tweeting as we go through, so check out my twitter feed if you're interesting in following along.

While many may argue about just which individual wine represents Australia's finest expression of Shiraz, few could argue that when considering top producers of Australian Shiraz, Henschke shouldn't be on the short list.

For more than 140 years, across five generations, the Henschke family has been growing grapes and making wine in a little corner of the hills surrounding the Barossa Valley. For the last 30 years, the winery has been run by Stephen Henschke and his wife Prue, with increasing help from their children.

The history of the Henschke family is in many ways the history of the Barossa Valley. Stephen's great-great-grandfather was one of the original Germanic (technically Silesian) settlers to the area who fled religious persecution and settled en-masse in the Barossa Valley. Johann Christian Henschke arrived in 1841, settling first in the Adelaide Hills area, and then later in the Barossa township of Bethany, where he helped source fruit tree cuttings and vine cuttings for the local community.

Eventually he bought property for his son, Paul Gotthard Henschke in the region that would become Barossa's Eden Valley -- a crumpled zone of geologic messiness that makes for rolling hills and small vales with lots of different soil types. Together they built a house, and then in 1860, a small stone winery, with the goal of becoming a fully self-sustaining homestead. They planted Riesling and Shiraz and settled down to continue the family line.

At one point there were six or seven small wineries in the little township nearby, but only one managed to survive the depression. And Henschke has been going strong ever since.

Like most Australian wineries in the 19th Century and the early parts of the 20th, Henschke produced sweet, fortified wines that were in demand around the world, and could easily withstand the hardships of export by sea without microbial problems. But in the 1950's interest in dry table wine began to emerge in Australia, and Paul Gotthard Henschke's grandson Cyril began experimenting with some of the old vine Shiraz on the property, which by that time were already 100 years old.

In 1952 Cyril made a dry Shiraz from his Mt. Edelston vineyard, and in 1958 he made the first single-vineyard wine from a vineyard named Gnadenberg, which means "Hill of Grace," after the old Lutheran church which lies just across the road from the vineyard. Cyril would go on to be a pioneer of dry table wine in the Barossa Valley, and one of the winemakers responsible for the worldwide recognition of Australian Shiraz as a serious wine. And the Hill of Grace would go on to become one of the single most famous Australian vineyards, which it remains today -- its own-rooted Shiraz vines now more than 145 years old.

Stephen Henschke expressed interest in winemaking as a young man, and went abroad to study in Germany in the mid 1970s. He met his wife Prue there in a botany class. "She and her sister were great cooks. I was in the skin diving club and loved catching abalone, so I'd bring some over and there would be lots of good seafood to eat. We always had a bottle of wine nearby and we had a great time. At first we were just good friends, but as my study abroad was coming to a close, I realized I didn't want to leave her behind," says Henschke.

In addition to a lovely wife, Henschke also got a partner in wine. Trained as both a botanist and a zoologist, Prue studied viticulture and wine assessment in Germany, and has become the driving force behind the continual improvements in viticulture at Henschke for the past thirty years.

On their return to the family farm, and upon the death of Stephen's father Cyril, the two put together a 10-year plan for their family winery that included everything from improving the quality of oak they used, to eventually eliminating the chemical fertilizers and pesticides used in their vineyards. Prue and Stephen are now on their third or fourth such plan, which will likely be implemented in part by one of their sons, Johann, who is currently studying to become a winemaker in Montpelier, France.

To the extent possible, the wines keep getting better. The viticulture continues to move farther down the spectrum of sustainable, and in 2009 100% of the family's vineyards were on track for organic certification, and were being treated with a number of biodynamic preparations. The winemaking continues to feature very little intervention, with open-top fermenters, ambient yeasts, no fining, and minimal filtration. Notably, Henschke used its last cork in the 2004 vintage. Every wine since has been bottled with a screwcap.

There are a number of historic winemaking families in Australia that have successfully continued operations from the 19th century until the present, but there are very few who have reached, and then held the heights of quality that Henschke continues to achieve. Their wines are highly recommended.

TASTING NOTES:

2009 Henschke "Julius" Riesling, Eden Valley
Pale gold in the glass, this wine has a nose of bright, unripe pear aromas that mingle with scents of bright lemon zest and flowers. I the mouth it is quite mineral-driven and floral, with just hints of lemon and lime zest, and a clean pear fruit. Faint tangerine skin notes linger on the finish. From a single vineyard of 50-year-old vines in the deep soils of Eden Valley. Score: around 9. Cost: $28 Click to buy. (Note: 2009 vintage not yet available in the USA).

2002 Henschke "Julius" Riesling, Eden Valley
Light gold in the glass, this wine smells lightly of petrol and paraffin with hints of orange marmalade and even a bit of green melon. In the mouth the wine is bright and delicate with apple and pear flavors mixed with fine floral notes. Excellent acidity and balance. The finish has this wonderfully sour character that makes me want to drink more. Score: between 9 and 9.5.

2002 Henschke "Louis" Semillon, Eden Valley
Light greenish-gold in the glass, this wine smells of bright candied lemon and fantastic floral aromas that waft dreamily about. In the mouth it has fantastic texture and an incredible electric lemon quality, that catapults the taste buds into wild paroxysms of excitement. Perfectly balanced with incredibly crackling acidity, the wine offers a nuttiness with a vanilla note on the finish. Made from 50-year-old-vines, this wine will age beautifully for decades. Score: around 9.5. Cost: $25 Click to buy.

2008 Henschke "Louis" Semillon, Eden Valley
Pale greenish-gold in the glass, this wine has a nose of kiwi fruit and green grass. In the mouth it offers wonderful kiwi flavors with bracing acidity, and wonderful lemon juice flavors that have a hint of waxiness to them. Bright, fresh, and exiting on the tongue. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $25 Click to buy.

2009 Henschke "Joseph Hill" Gewurztraminer, Eden Valley
Light greenish-gold in color, this wine smells of candied mandarin oranges and wonderful floral scents that are hard to pin down. In the mouth the wine is bright and smooth on the palate, with mandarin orange and wet slate flavors, that shift to orange zest on the finish. Score: between 8.5 and 9.

1996 Henschke Mount Edelston Shiraz, Eden Valley
Medium ruby in the glass with hints of brick color at the edge, this wine smells wonderfully of smoked bacon and black olives. In the mouth the wine is deliciously savory, with black olive and chocolate flavors mixing with exotic incense. The fruit has faded to a prune and chocolate confection with notes of stewed cherries. Wonderfully dark and deep with great acidity, the wine, made from 90-year-old vines, reminds me of the atmosphere of an old wood paneled library well worn with comfort. Score: around 9 . Cost: $90. Click to buy.

1996 Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz, Eden Valley
Medium ruby in color with a slight orange hue on the edge, this wine smells of beautiful green herbs with a minty cast to them mixed with a wet dirt and black olive scent. In the mouth the wine has an incredible savory black olive, dried cherry, chocolate, and wet redwood bark quality. A note of sherried vanilla lingers on the finish. Faint, sculpted tannins emerge over time. Lovely. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $350. Click to buy.

1996 Henschke "Cyril Henschke" Cabernet Sauvignon, Eden Valley
Medium ruby in color, this wine has a nose of stewed prunes and stewed cherry aromas with hints of cocoa powder. In the mouth the wine still has quite pushy, muscular tannins that clutch flavors of dried cherries, cocoa powder, black olives, and black licorice in their suede fist. Very nice acidity still lingers in the glass, with a woody quality that remains in the finish. Score: around 9. Cost: $75 Click to buy.

2006 Henschke "Hill of Grace" Shiraz, Eden Valley
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a compelling nose of roasted espresso, graphite, black cherry and plum fruit aromas. In the mouth, black plum and blackberry fruit have a stony earthiness mixed with a faint trace of saline and black olive savoriness into which a bit of anise creeps. A deep dark chocolate quality emerges from the perfectly balanced acidity and the most finely grained, supple tannins to linger with an umami character in the finish. Impeccably balanced and fantastic. Score: around 9.5. Cost: $unknown, as it is not yet released in the USA. It will likely retail for somewhere north of $250. Click to buy other vintages.

2007 Henschke "Cyril Henschke" Cabernet Sauvignon, Eden Valley
Medium to dark garnet in the glass, this wine smells of slightly briary cherry and plum aromas with a lively sweet note to them. In the mouth it has a fantastic aromatic sweetness that lingers over cherry and chocolate flavors with a slight saline/soy sauce quality that is just an undercurrent to add complexity without detracting from the fruit. A wonderful plummy espresso quality lingers in the finish. Very gulpable. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $90 Click to buy. (Note: 2007 vintage not yet released in the USA).

2001 Henschke "Hill of Roses" Shiraz, Eden Valley
This wine, the first vintage of a vineyard planted with cuttings made from the famous Hill of Grace vineyard, is medium ruby in the glass with hints of brick at the edge. It smells of pencil lead, well oiled leather, and kalamata olives. In the mouth the wine is wonderfully balanced with a medley of kalamata olive, black cherry, and minty chocolate flavors. This chocolate quality that lingers with an anise note into the finish. Lightly grippy tannins with very nice acidity make this a truly pleasurable wine. Score: between 9 and 9.5.

2008 Henschke "Hill of Faith" Mataro, Eden Valley
Dark garnet in color, this wine smells of root beer and grapey cassis aromas with a remarkable note of cinnamon. In the mouth, the wine is juicy and bright with voluminous tannins and fantastic acidity. Rich flavors of mulberry, anise, and chocolate dominate, while cassis lingers on the finish. This wine comes from a tiny block of 60-year-old Mataro or Mourvedre grapes in the Hill of Grace vineyard. This wine is not publicly available, and was made to commemorate the tiny church that stands opposite the Hill of Grace vineyard, which is, in turn named after the Church. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Not for retail sale.

While many may argue about just which individual wine represents Australia's finest expression of Shiraz, few could argue that when considering top producers of Australian Shiraz, Henschke shouldn't be on the short list.

For more than 140 years, across five generations, the Henschke family has been growing grapes and making wine in a little corner of the hills surrounding the Barossa Valley. For the last 30 years, the winery has been run by Stephen Henschke and his wife Prue, with increasing help from their children.

The history of the Henschke family is in many ways the history of the Barossa Valley. Stephen's great-great-grandfather was one of the original Germanic (technically Silesian) settlers to the area who fled religious persecution and settled en-masse in the Barossa Valley. Johann Christian Henschke arrived in 1841, settling first in the Adelaide Hills area, and then later in the Barossa township of Bethany, where he helped source fruit tree cuttings and vine cuttings for the local community.

Eventually he bought property for his son, Paul Gotthard Henschke in the region that would become Barossa's Eden Valley -- a crumpled zone of geologic messiness that makes for rolling hills and small vales with lots of different soil types. Together they built a house, and then in 1860, a small stone winery, with the goal of becoming a fully self-sustaining homestead. They planted Riesling and Shiraz and settled down to continue the family line.

At one point there were six or seven small wineries in the little township nearby, but only one managed to survive the depression. And Henschke has been going strong ever since.

Like most Australian wineries in the 19th Century and the early parts of the 20th, Henschke produced sweet, fortified wines that were in demand around the world, and could easily withstand the hardships of export by sea without microbial problems. But in the 1950's interest in dry table wine began to emerge in Australia, and Paul Gotthard Henschke's grandson Cyril began experimenting with some of the old vine Shiraz on the property, which by that time were already 100 years old.

In 1952 Cyril made a dry Shiraz from his Mt. Edelston vineyard, and in 1958 he made the first single-vineyard wine from a vineyard named Gnadenberg, which means "Hill of Grace," after the old Lutheran church which lies just across the road from the vineyard. Cyril would go on to be a pioneer of dry table wine in the Barossa Valley, and one of the winemakers responsible for the worldwide recognition of Australian Shiraz as a serious wine. And the Hill of Grace would go on to become one of the single most famous Australian vineyards, which it remains today -- its own-rooted Shiraz vines now more than 145 years old.

Stephen Henschke expressed interest in winemaking as a young man, and went abroad to study in Germany in the mid 1970s. He met his wife Prue there in a botany class. "She and her sister were great cooks. I was in the skin diving club and loved catching abalone, so I'd bring some over and there would be lots of good seafood to eat. We always had a bottle of wine nearby and we had a great time. At first we were just good friends, but as my study abroad was coming to a close, I realized I didn't want to leave her behind," says Henschke.

In addition to a lovely wife, Henschke also got a partner in wine. Trained as both a botanist and a zoologist, Prue studied viticulture and wine assessment in Germany, and has become the driving force behind the continual improvements in viticulture at Henschke for the past thirty years.

On their return to the family farm, and upon the death of Stephen's father Cyril, the two put together a 10-year plan for their family winery that included everything from improving the quality of oak they used, to eventually eliminating the chemical fertilizers and pesticides used in their vineyards. Prue and Stephen are now on their third or fourth such plan, which will likely be implemented in part by one of their sons, Johann, who is currently studying to become a winemaker in Montpelier, France.

To the extent possible, the wines keep getting better. The viticulture continues to move farther down the spectrum of sustainable, and in 2009 100% of the family's vineyards were on track for organic certification, and were being treated with a number of biodynamic preparations. The winemaking continues to feature very little intervention, with open-top fermenters, ambient yeasts, no fining, and minimal filtration. Notably, Henschke used its last cork in the 2004 vintage. Every wine since has been bottled with a screwcap.

There are a number of historic winemaking families in Australia that have successfully continued operations from the 19th century until the present, but there are very few who have reached, and then held the heights of quality that Henschke continues to achieve. Their wines are highly recommended.

TASTING NOTES:

2009 Henschke "Julius" Riesling, Eden Valley
Pale gold in the glass, this wine has a nose of bright, unripe pear aromas that mingle with scents of bright lemon zest and flowers. I the mouth it is quite mineral-driven and floral, with just hints of lemon and lime zest, and a clean pear fruit. Faint tangerine skin notes linger on the finish. From a single vineyard of 50-year-old vines in the deep soils of Eden Valley. Score: around 9. Cost: $28 Click to buy. (Note: 2009 vintage not yet available in the USA).

2002 Henschke "Julius" Riesling, Eden Valley
Light gold in the glass, this wine smells lightly of petrol and paraffin with hints of orange marmalade and even a bit of green melon. In the mouth the wine is bright and delicate with apple and pear flavors mixed with fine floral notes. Excellent acidity and balance. The finish has this wonderfully sour character that makes me want to drink more. Score: between 9 and 9.5.

2002 Henschke "Louis" Semillon, Eden Valley
Light greenish-gold in the glass, this wine smells of bright candied lemon and fantastic floral aromas that waft dreamily about. In the mouth it has fantastic texture and an incredible electric lemon quality, that catapults the taste buds into wild paroxysms of excitement. Perfectly balanced with incredibly crackling acidity, the wine offers a nuttiness with a vanilla note on the finish. Made from 50-year-old-vines, this wine will age beautifully for decades. Score: around 9.5. Cost: $25 Click to buy.

2008 Henschke "Louis" Semillon, Eden Valley
Pale greenish-gold in the glass, this wine has a nose of kiwi fruit and green grass. In the mouth it offers wonderful kiwi flavors with bracing acidity, and wonderful lemon juice flavors that have a hint of waxiness to them. Bright, fresh, and exiting on the tongue. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $25 Click to buy.

2009 Henschke "Joseph Hill" Gewurztraminer, Eden Valley
Light greenish-gold in color, this wine smells of candied mandarin oranges and wonderful floral scents that are hard to pin down. In the mouth the wine is bright and smooth on the palate, with mandarin orange and wet slate flavors, that shift to orange zest on the finish. Score: between 8.5 and 9.

1996 Henschke Mount Edelston Shiraz, Eden Valley
Medium ruby in the glass with hints of brick color at the edge, this wine smells wonderfully of smoked bacon and black olives. In the mouth the wine is deliciously savory, with black olive and chocolate flavors mixing with exotic incense. The fruit has faded to a prune and chocolate confection with notes of stewed cherries. Wonderfully dark and deep with great acidity, the wine, made from 90-year-old vines, reminds me of the atmosphere of an old wood paneled library well worn with comfort. Score: around 9 . Cost: $90. Click to buy.

1996 Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz, Eden Valley
Medium ruby in color with a slight orange hue on the edge, this wine smells of beautiful green herbs with a minty cast to them mixed with a wet dirt and black olive scent. In the mouth the wine has an incredible savory black olive, dried cherry, chocolate, and wet redwood bark quality. A note of sherried vanilla lingers on the finish. Faint, sculpted tannins emerge over time. Lovely. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $350. Click to buy.

1996 Henschke "Cyril Henschke" Cabernet Sauvignon, Eden Valley
Medium ruby in color, this wine has a nose of stewed prunes and stewed cherry aromas with hints of cocoa powder. In the mouth the wine still has quite pushy, muscular tannins that clutch flavors of dried cherries, cocoa powder, black olives, and black licorice in their suede fist. Very nice acidity still lingers in the glass, with a woody quality that remains in the finish. Score: around 9. Cost: $75 Click to buy.

2006 Henschke "Hill of Grace" Shiraz, Eden Valley
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a compelling nose of roasted espresso, graphite, black cherry and plum fruit aromas. In the mouth, black plum and blackberry fruit have a stony earthiness mixed with a faint trace of saline and black olive savoriness into which a bit of anise creeps. A deep dark chocolate quality emerges from the perfectly balanced acidity and the most finely grained, supple tannins to linger with an umami character in the finish. Impeccably balanced and fantastic. Score: around 9.5. Cost: $unknown, as it is not yet released in the USA. It will likely retail for somewhere north of $250. Click to buy other vintages.

2007 Henschke "Cyril Henschke" Cabernet Sauvignon, Eden Valley
Medium to dark garnet in the glass, this wine smells of slightly briary cherry and plum aromas with a lively sweet note to them. In the mouth it has a fantastic aromatic sweetness that lingers over cherry and chocolate flavors with a slight saline/soy sauce quality that is just an undercurrent to add complexity without detracting from the fruit. A wonderful plummy espresso quality lingers in the finish. Very gulpable. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $90 Click to buy. (Note: 2007 vintage not yet released in the USA).

2001 Henschke "Hill of Roses" Shiraz, Eden Valley
This wine, the first vintage of a vineyard planted with cuttings made from the famous Hill of Grace vineyard, is medium ruby in the glass with hints of brick at the edge. It smells of pencil lead, well oiled leather, and kalamata olives. In the mouth the wine is wonderfully balanced with a medley of kalamata olive, black cherry, and minty chocolate flavors. This chocolate quality that lingers with an anise note into the finish. Lightly grippy tannins with very nice acidity make this a truly pleasurable wine. Score: between 9 and 9.5.

2008 Henschke "Hill of Faith" Mataro, Eden Valley
Dark garnet in color, this wine smells of root beer and grapey cassis aromas with a remarkable note of cinnamon. In the mouth, the wine is juicy and bright with voluminous tannins and fantastic acidity. Rich flavors of mulberry, anise, and chocolate dominate, while cassis lingers on the finish. This wine comes from a tiny block of 60-year-old Mataro or Mourvedre grapes in the Hill of Grace vineyard. This wine is not publicly available, and was made to commemorate the tiny church that stands opposite the Hill of Grace vineyard, which is, in turn named after the Church. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Not for retail sale.

Most people, when they come visit me in San Francisco and ask to be taken to wine country, assume that they're going to Napa. But at least half the time, that's definitely not where we end up.

My well meaning friends aren't the only ones who seem to forget that Northern California has many different "wine countries." Napa casts a long shadow, as it were.

I've got a bit of love for every piece of wine country we've got here in California, but there's a special place in my heart for Sonoma County, both because it is the place of my birth, but also because I think sometimes it gets short shrift compared to its more famous neighbor.

Sonoma County is several different wine regions rolled up into one -- from the chilly fog of the Sonoma Coast and Carneros, to the cool Green Valley and Russian River Valley, to the warmer climes of Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma Mountain, Alexander Valley, and the Sonoma Valley -- many different micro-climates and many different wines, from sparkling to Pinot Noir to Zinfandel to Cabernet.

The main problem, however, is that all these regions lay spread out over a wide area, much wider than the relatively (in comparison) compact Napa Valley. So experiencing the breadth of Sonoma can be time consuming, no matter how fulfilling it usually ends up being.

So while it's a good idea for wine lovers to pay more attention to Sonoma in general, there is one weekend this year when any self respecting wine lover shouldn't be thinking of anything else: The Sonoma Wine Country Weekend.

Now in it's third year, this weekend celebration of Sonoma County wine is a combination of two previously separate annual events: The 31st annual Sonoma County Showcase of Wine and Food and the Sonoma Valley Harvest Wine Auction. These events are now combined into a single event that represents the best opportunity in existence for anyone (who isn't planning on being on the Playa) to learn a lot about Sonoma wine in the space of a couple of days.

The weekend starts on Friday September 3rd, with winemaker lunches at various wineries around the valley, followed by dinners that evening.

On Saturday the 4th, the grand tasting will take place from 11 AM to 4 PM, where more than 200 Sonoma County wineries will offer their wines for tasting along with food from more than 100 of the regions top chefs and artisan food purveyors. Saturday evening will feature winemaker dinners at some of Sonoma's most spectacular wineries.

And if that weren't enough, on Sunday the live Harvest Wine Auction, whose proceeds go to local charities, offers chances at bragging rights and some amazing prizes (and wines) for those who can afford to be generous, as well as a blockbuster meal cooked by some serious Sonoma culinary heavyweights. Rumor has it that there will be a little wine poured at this event as well.

While attendance at the auction and dinner on Sunday is a somewhat pricey proposition at $500 a head, the rest of the weekend's events are a relative steal at between $75 and $195 bucks.

This is a huge opportunity to soak in the breadth and depth of Sonoma County wine without spending 4 days and 8 hours in the car zipping all over the place. It comes highly recommended by yours truly.

Find out everything you need to know on the event web site.

Sonoma Wine Country Weekend
September 3-5, 2010
MacMurray Ranch Winery
9015 Westside Road
Healdsburg, CA 95448

Tickets for the grand tasting, which can be purchased online, are $150 ($90 of which is tax deductible!). Those who are into something more exclusive can purchase "Grand Reserve" tickets for $195, and get the chance to taste higher-end wines from the likes of Flowers, Pride, Hanzell, and Joseph Swan, all paired with food from Sonoma's Farmhouse Inn restaurant.

This event will almost certainly sell out, so purchase your tickets now. Shuttle service from Santa Rosa (recommended) is provided.

The weather will likely be gorgeous, but given our chilly summer thus far, it could also be cool and windy, so wear sunscreen and have a sweater or jacket in the car, if not around your shoulders. Wear comfortable shoes that you can walk on a lawn and on gravel with. My usual tips for public tastings apply: get lots of sleep the night before; wear dark clothes to avoid red wine disasters; drink lots of water; make sure your belly is full -- plenty to eat there; ladies (and gents) leave the cologne and perfume at home; and spit if you actually want to learn something.

Thank goodness for the Internet, as we all need a good laugh now and then. In the latest round of research that makes you scratch your head and wonder, "what on earth were they after?" it turns out that people who order a glass of wine at lunch during a job interview are stupid.

Or more accurately, ordering a glass of wine while you're in the middle of a job interview (and you happen to be in a restaurant or bar, that is) will cause most people to unconsciously think you're dumber than you are.

Nevermind that drinking while in the process of being interviewed for a job IS particularly stupid, perhaps with the only exception being that refusing an offered glass of wine would entail a social faux pas.

These researchers showed videos of potential job applicants in restaurant based-interviews to a group of managers, and asked them to rate the intelligence of the applicant based on whether they ordered a coke or "the house Merlot."

The applicants got the lower scores for their intelligence when they ordered the wine, and the lowest score when they ordered wine after the interviewer ordered a Coke, leading the researchers to coin the term "imbibing idiot bias" to describe the effect.

The real question raised here, which was not answered by the researchers, is quite serious, however. Do we all look dumber with a glass of wine in our hands, or just when it happens to be Merlot?

Read the full story.

Photo courtesy of les sens ordinaires.

Sunset Valley
This is a great view of the Aconcagua valley, one of the more stunning wine regions in Chile. Dotted with small towns alongside the river, with stark mountain slopes that spring up steeply from the alluvial plains, if you like wine (and avocados, which grow on nearly every slope not planted with grapevines) the Aconcagua valley is an Eden of sorts. -- Alder Yarrow

INSTRUCTIONS:
Download this image by right-clicking on the image and selecting "save link as" or "save target as" and then select the desired location on your computer to save the image. Mac users can also just click the image to open the full size view and drag that to their desktops.

To set the image as your desktop wallpaper, Mac users should follow these instructions, while PC users should follow these.

PRINTS:
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One of my little side projects around here is to bring you beautiful images of vineyard and wine country landscapes on a fairly regular basis under the banner "Vinography Images." I've had year-long partnerships with some of the best wine photographers in the world, and I'm thrilled to introduce my latest partnership with photographer Matt Wilson.

I first encountered Wilson through his portraits of some of Chile's youngest winemakers, and went on to enjoy his excellent landscapes of South American vineyards. Matt lives in Chile and has photographed all over Chile and Argentina, as well as other wine regions around the world.

Matt was born in the U.K. and he studied at the International Centre of Photography in N.Y. in the early nineties, going on to become a touring music photographer in the USA, working notably in the Hip Hop scene, with artists such as Mos Def, The Roots, Method Man, Redman, and Common.

After moving to Chile 7 years ago he began working in the wine industry, photographing vineyards, landscapes, wine personalities including many portraits of wine professionals, from workers to owners.

Matt's currently published books are: 'Chile Uncorked' which was published in 2007, following the highly successful exhibition of the same name; and Chile: Country of Wine and Mountains, published by Versant-Sud in Belgium (2009).

His work can be seen regularly in many global publications including Wine Enthusiast (USA), Decanter (UK) and Epicuro (Chile).

His stock photographs can be seen and purchased on his UK agency Cephas.

I hope you enjoy his pictures as your desktop backgrounds or wallpaper for the year to come.

Fifty miles south of the city of Mendoza the valley of Tunuyan feels less like a valley and more like a vast, kneeling supplicant to the immediate, looming bulk of the Northern Andes mountains. Though the valley floor is massive -- sweeping away from the jagged, snow capped peaks in every possible direction as if it were trying to get out of the way of their falling bulk -- you never get the sense that it is very flat. No matter where you stand, the world seems to be constantly tipping up towards (or down away from, as the case may be) the peaks above, leaving the uneasy feeling that somehow if you stopped walking or closed your eyes for a moment, you'd fall over -- nudged off balance by a world pushed aside by the Andes.

The topological uneasiness caused by the very real angle of the alluvial plains of Tunuyan is accompanied by another phenomenon common to the world's most expansive landscapes. The ground seems nearer to the sky; and the two of them together -- the whole wide world -- contrive to make the human observer seem mouse-small in the face of its sheer grandeur.

In this landscape, it can be difficult to fully appreciate what is quite likely the most ambitious winery project on the surface the planet. In the shadow of great mountains, winemaker Michel Rolland, viticulturalist and managing director Carlos Mayer, and some of the world's most famous and influential winery families are building the crown jewel of Argentina's wine world. Clos de los Siete -- a partnership originally with seven investors (though some have subsequently pulled out) -- will be, when fully realized, a semi-collective grouping of world-class wine estates who will each make their own wines while contributing some of their grapes to a single wine produced under the Clos de la Siete name.

Certainly the dirt and pothole-ridden pavement back roads that lead the visitor to the unmarked adobe-style gatehouse at the base of Clos de los Siete do not properly set the stage for the grandeur that lies in wait at the foot of the mountains. Driving past the gatehouse onto the lower roads of the property, which were beginning to show signs of their eventual groomed state when we visited about six years ago, and even seeing the initial views of some of the vineyards and low-slung architectural forms of the wineries, it is difficult to get a handle on exactly what it is you are seeing.

For me, it took a short drive with Carlos Mayer to the top south-western corner of the property, the highest elevation point of the project, to fully understand the real scale of the numbers he was reeling off as we bumped along the dirt roads. 2092 acres of property at 1,200 meters above sea level planted, since 1999, with vines at 2500 plants per acre on a plot of land four kilometers long and two kilometers wide sounds like a lot of vineyard. Until you see it. And then you realize that it's a hell of a lot of vineyard.

As we bumped our way back down to the first of the winery buildings past the neighboring property overrun with head-high gorse and some sort of equally unattractive bush (which Mayer says indicates excellent soil infertility for grapes) I also got the sense of the unbelievable effort it must have taken to transform the landscape to the point at which grapevines (and irrigation pipes, and electrical wires) could be put into the ground. Clearly neither time, effort, nor expense were a barrier to success.

And it took only two steps into any one of the wineries on the property to fully understand how much expense we are really talking about.

Each winery on the property is an exercise in architectural expression as well as the stuff of winemakers' wet dreams. With a literal blank slate (and no doubt, blank checks from the owners) the wineries of Clos de los Siete are the most sophisticated custom winemaking facilities I have ever seen. Fully optimized for gravity flow, precise humidity and temperature control, workflow, cleanliness, and the exacting custom specifications of Mayer, Rolland, and the individual winemakers for each of the families, they would be impressive even without the stylish edifices in which they sit. The buildings themselves express the personalities of their owners, and no doubt their architects as well. From the postmodern Santa Fe visions of artist/illustrator Philippe Duillet (famous among other things for being the art director of the Star Wars films) at the Flecha de los Andes winery, to the low slung modernism-meets-Tuscan-castle of Cuvelier los Andes, to the majestic Boston-brick-warehouse monolith of Monteviejo.

It's all to easy to see only as far as the expression of massive wealth and ambition at play across the landscape here. These palaces here at the ends of the earth can, and likely will by some, be written off as an exercise of ego with no spending cap. But anyone who bothers to stay long enough to taste the wines being made here would have to be dead not to recognize that Rolland and Mayer and the individual winemakers of these properties are without question in the process of setting a new bar for Argentinean wine.

Perhaps the most wildly available product of this project is the wine that bears it's name: Clos de la Siete, a blend that Michel Rolland personally puts together each year from fruit provided by each of the partner wineries. I've tasted the wine for the past six or seven vintages and have been interested in its evolution. What started out as a somewhat lush, accessible wine has become ever more serious, to the point that it now sports tannins that are built for aging, and a flavor profile that really needs a couple of years in the bottle before it will show its full potential.

The 2008 is a blend of Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, and Petite Verdot.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Dark garnet in color, this wine smells of cassis and well oiled leather. In the mouth aggressive tannins wrap the tongue in a leathery fist while flavors of wet dirt, cassis, and dried black cherries fuse into a rich mulch of tastiness. Quite young and in need of 2-3 years of age, this wine will be much more delicious with some time. As it is, those who appreciate something a bit more austere may really enjoy this wine.

Food Pairing:

Overall Score: between 8.5 and 9.
At this point in it's evolution in addition to giving it some air (decant it if you can) I recommend serving it with any variety of charred beef that strikes your fancy.

How Much?: $20

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.