Steak and Zin

I'm a lover of T-bone steak and I am also a lover of Zinfandel. Over the weekend I had the once again opportunity to have both. Ana and I, along with our dear friends Chico and Sessy, stopped at the Harris Ranch off of I-5. Ana and I had been there many years ago but this was the first time for our friends to try it out.

From my opening line you know what I had. The only thing in addition to the T-bone and Zin was garlic mash potatoes and vegetables. I choose the 2007 Harris Ranch Zinfandel only because I wanted to do a whole Harris Ranch thing. I wasn't disappointed with my choice of wines. It was aromatic with sweet fruity tones, the color was clear and sharp ruby. The taste was equal to the aromatic tones and I picked up light black berry and what I think was black currant. The only disappointment in the wine was the lack of any lengthy after taste. I enjoy more the wines that linger in my mouth. That is not to say that I didn't enjoy this particular wine, I did. I'm only saying that I was disappointed in that the aromas and flavors that I was experiencing wasn't staying long enough.

I hope you all have an opportunity to stop and eat at Harris Ranch and try their Zinfandel. Here's to all of us in this new year. Cheers!

Happy New Year

Well it's been some time since my last posting. Since then, Ana and I have gone to New York and back. The trip was fabuloso!

We stayed with family during our stay and had the opportunity to try some home made moonshine. Yes, you heard me right. It was moonshine from the Dominican Republic or at least the cook was from there. They call it Pitorro. We were able to bring a bit back with us to California and were told to let it stand for a year and that we should put some fruit of our choice in the bottle and hide it from any light for that year period. It was recommended that the fruit we choose be cherries. Someone suggested we mix in some plumbs as well. Someone told us to bury it in the ground but I am reluctant to do that as I will most likely forget were I bury it.

In addition to the Pitorro we tried Rum from Puerto Rico called "Ron del Barrilito" and we tried a liquor from Greece called "Metaxa" both very very good. I was surprised when I was told by a certain Puerto Rican that though Bicardi is from Puerto Rico not many their in New York drink it. They prefer Barrilito.

Wine Rating, what do you know about it?

Personally I know very little about wine rating. So I, like always, jumped on the internet and did a little research.

Well after my brief research I'm still mystified. The bottom line...it's personal. From personal it's easy to picture all kinds of issues and one common thought is that how impartial are the ratings that are given. There was even one suggestion that the rating can be or might be influenced by the amount of advertising you take out in the rater's magazine.

I have a suggestion, to get away from personal, personal needs to be diluted. How do you dilute "personal"? By use of the greater numbers. Put together a group of tasters (50) who are willing to taste a given wine. All tasters are to score the wine using the same approach and rating system. You then take the average of those tasters' scores to come up with the given rating. This approach would give little impact to those ratings (in your group of raters) on the outskirts. The problem with this approach is that it would be hard to find many people who would like to participate.

One way around that problem might be to assemble a pool of as many wine tasters as possible and each month send out a list of wines for that pool to taste. Have them submit their scores as to each wine they were able to taste. Rate only those wines for which you have at least 50 results and then publish those results. Under this approach you would constantly have to be recruiting your pool of wine tasters but people just getting into it might enjoy being part of a larger body of wine tasters.

What are your thoughts?