What is a Cult Wine?
What is a cult wine? If you want more than the typical flippant answer – it’s a wine you cannot afford – here goes how I explain what makes a cult wine. This explanation is best described by a story about a friend of ours. Our good friend, Steve Carpenter, along with his wife, are extraordinarily knowledgeable about wine, have a large cellar, and are generous in opening up legendary wines in their collection for friends such as us. (We’re very really lucky in who we have as friends.) A few years ago, Steve found a Napa Valley Cabernet, the 2012 Ontogeny by Bevan Cellars, that he absolutely loved. The wine critic Robert Parker had recently scored it quite high, and Bevan’s small production of it made finding bottles still available very hard. Steve did some research and found out that one random wine store in Las Vegas still had three bottles. The wine store, however, would not ship to Colorado. So, Steve paid for the wine and told the wine store to hold it. He then bought a plane ticket to Las Vegas, picked up the wine, and brought it back to Colorado. That, my friends, is the very definition of a cult wine – a wine that gains such a religious following that people will literally fly around the country to scoop up the last few available bottles.
Century Club Update: Buying ALL the Wine
As you may recall from my blog post Looking For a Club You Can Drink Your Way Into?, my New Year’s resolution was to reach Century Club status by the end of 2016. You’re admitted into the Century Club if you’ve tried at least 100 different grape varietals. When I initially tallied up the grape varietals I had tried, I was at a pathetic 32. (Apparently, one can only count Pinot Noir once.) That meant I had 68 grape varietals out there I had to source in order for my quest to be successful.
Birth Year Bottles – Part Two: Chugging a First Growth
A few years ago, while brainstorming for a creative birthday gift for Heather (I often have to give this a lot of thought as I rarely seem to have good ideas), I thought that perhaps I should buy her a bottle of wine from her birth year. After spending some time researching the right bottle – how to do this was discussed in the last blog – I zeroed in on a Mouton from her birth year that was available at Cellaraiders.com. (Mouton, technically called Chateau Mouton Rothschild, is one of the great French Bordeaux wines… and James Bond has been known to drink it from time to time as well. It is a red wine from Pauillac on the left bank of Bordeaux, made primarily from Cabernet Sauvignon and classified as a First Growth.) Her birth year was a mediocre year at best in Bordeaux, and finding wines still available from that year was not simple.
Birth Year Bottles – Part One: 4 Steps to Buying and Enjoying a Bottle from the Year You Were Born
What could be a better present for your significant other (or yourself) than a bottle of wine from one’s birth year? There’s no other food or drink where you can literally enjoy something created the year you or your significant other was born. I’ve written this as a two part series – the first post is about how to find and open a wine from your birth year. The second is the story of the bottle I bought Heather (your regular blog author) as a birthday present of wine from the year she was born (to protect the innocent, we’ll go ahead and leave the year undisclosed).
Why The Story Behind the Wine Matters
A little while ago my husband (Jordan) and I had the pleasure of having an impromptu date night. We went to a steakhouse near our home and after some wine list searching, we ordered the 2011 Jordan Cabernet Sauvignon. I’m a big fan of Jordan Vineyard & Winery, but to be honest… my husband isn’t (sorry Jordan Vineyard). That’s not to say he won’t drink it, but it’s rarely his first choice. Despite the fact that it’s not his favorite wine, we drink it on a somewhat regular basis because of the amazing experience we had when we tasted there years ago.
