Wine & Words

This month we are pleased to have Phillip Edwards, Southeastern Regional Sales Manager for Ex Cellars Wine Agency, as a “guest wine guy.”

A few months ago I found a site on the Internet called YumYuk.com. It’s about the fact that different people have different numbers of taste buds and therefore prefer different kinds of tastes. They’ve applied this notion to wine tasting, dividing people into four groups, according to the types of taste they will probably like in wine.

It's hot. No two ways about it. We're entering the Dog Days of summer. We reduce our activity level. Eat a little lighter. But we still enjoy the finer accompaniments to a lazy afternoon or a summer picnic. We've selected our Featured wines this month to go with sunshine & shade, salads & seafood, surf & sand. These are the wines we love in the good old summertime.

We Americans are largely responsible for the rage for "single varietals" in wine. People come into the store and ask for "a Cab" or "a Chard" or "a Pinot" (and I always have to ask "Noir or Grigio"). Those who are more wine-savvy may ask for one of the classic European blends like "Rhone" or "Bordeaux" or "Chianti." They know that the grapes in these blends and the proportions of each are set by long tradition and in many cases by law. It is the Australians, I think, who are mostly responsible for introducing proprietary blends that…well, just taste good. Blending grapes of different varieties and from different vineyards allows the winemaker to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. That’s one reason the year of the vintage is not as important as it once was. Blended wines are not "made in the vineyard" but are, rather, a result of the blender’s art. This month we will feature some of our favorite blends. We hope they’ll become yours, as well.

It is indeed a pleasure to travel west on I-40, through the bustling Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle, past Greensboro, past Winston-Salem onto Highway 421 north and into the Yadkin Valley wine country. A couple of weeks ago, Yvonne and I caravanned with Washington Wine & Gourmet store manager Mary Mehlich and her husband Mark. We followed the familiar "bunch of grapes" directional signs off the highway and through the rolling farmland hills surrounding the Yadkin River valley. It was a beautiful early spring day, with little colts and calves (Chef Yvonne saw the latter as "veals") frolicking in the achingly green fields. We renewed old friendships, made some new ones and brought back some great Carolina wines.

The clocks have already sprung ahead, and though the weather here hasn't warmed much yet, I expect we'll be complaining about the heat before too long. This month we've selected some wines for the transition to balmy afternoons and steaks on the grill.