Water Tower Fine Wines is Coming Soon

Tuesday September 22nd will usher in a new era in my life with the opening of our wine store in Mt Washington at 6136 Campus lane. I intend for this to be a different kind of wine store. My mantra is "It helps to know what it tastes like, if you want to buy it."
As such my goal will be to sample as much wine as possible to my customers, so there knowledge and appreciation of wine can be stretched. We will carry over 500 different wines including more than 50 sparkling wines. Our Friday wine tastings will start on October 2nd at 5:30 with the first 15 people being treated to a sample of whatever sparkling wine I open that night. The tasting will be a brown bag comparison of similar wines from different regions for $15. There will be a premium pour available for a separate charge. Food, made by my talented wife will be provided to complement the wines. This is very exciting for us and we hope that our enthusiasm is shared by our customers. Come see us and share joys of learning about wine and food.
David

Belated Twitter Taste (not so) Live

I know the Frederick Wildman Twitter Taste Live took place on Saturday night, but several things caused me not to be able to join. The primary issue was the temperature in Cincinnati, it was raw and in the low seventies, certainly far from ideal weather to sample such a fine selection of summer wines. So we tried them twice over the last two evenings and will finish them off tonight. That said, they were exceptional wines! I am not sure how many people read this blog, but I know that some other bloggers have gotten flack for not acknowledging freebies. I got these wine for free as samples.

The Sauv Blanc ,which is clearly marketed to the US market, called Attitude (2008) is a crisp clean wine from Pascal Jolivet. This wine was not grassy in the least, but rather had a refined tart pink grapefruit flavor that I find very refreshing. The wine has "racy acidity", which makes it very food friendly. My wife particularly liked it with asparagus. This wine was a hit with all of those who we sampled it with.

The next wine was a Chablis (2007) from Christian Moreau. This wine exhibited the lighter side of Chardonnay. It was simple and straight forward, with clean vanilla and honey notes. This was a very refreshing wine with hints of melon. For this often overlooked French stepchild of Chardonnay, often overlooked in the over oaked work of the American wine industry, this was very good.

From Burgundy we took a detour to Alsace and the Hugel 2007 Riesling. Hugel has always been one of my favorite Alsatian producers with just enough of the gravely flintiness of the region to make it refreshing, while not overpowering the wine. This wine had wonderful green apple notes complemented by melon and peach. I found just a hint of nuttiness on the finish. Again this was another wonderful wine!

Next we travel back to Burgundy for Olivier Leflaive's "Les Setilles" 2007, this was wonderful expression of chardonnay, with just the right amount of oak to give it creamy vanilla notes. It also exhibits the tropical fruits which are most associated with the grape in its unoaked form. This is a clean wine with fresh tart notes that I find to a great expression of the grape. There are hints of citrus, mango and guava. This is truly a summer wine, while many of the over oaked American expressions of the grape are better suited for steak and cold weather.

My favorite of the tasting was the next wine from the Rhone. The Parallel 45 Rose'from Paul Jaboulet. I must admit my wife and I have been on a serious Rose' kick this summer. That said it was still a really good wine. This wine had body and creaminess sometimes missing in Rose'. It had light refreshing notes of strawberry and is very thirst quenching. A great summer sipper.

Finally came the Gamay from Potel-Aviron 2008. Just as with the Rose' I must admit that I am not a big fan of Beaujolais. I was pleasantly surprised with this wine, it was good. While still not one of my favorite, I must say that this is a good red wine for the summer and even though I am not a fan of chilling red wines, I could see this wine with a slight chill on it. This is a good wine for anyone who likes wines on the fruitier side. Though heavy on the fruit this is still a clean and smooth tasting wine. I still cannot say that I really like Beaujolais wines, but I do have more respect for them after trying this example.

In closing I want to thank Frederick Wildman for providing these wines free for us to sample and review. They were all very nice. More importantly for most consumers they were affordable. The Rose' is $12, the Beaujplais is $13, the Sauv Blanc is $18 (though a little high for a sauv blanc, not so for a good Sancerre), the Hugel is $20 and worth it, and the two Chardonnays are $23. I think these are all affordable and worth the money. Obviously there are a lot of good summer time wines out here for those without a clue, these could be good starting points in each of their categories. I also want to say in closing that we will likely carry several of these wines in our new store when we open this fall, so Wildman will benefit from there sampling in more than one way. Thanks again.

Our new venture.

My wife and I have been busy the past week. We finally closed on a building, in the near in Cincinnati suburb of Mt Washington, where we will open Water Tower Fine Wines this fall. We have been talking about doing this for many years and now that we have actually embarked on the journey, it is very exciting. We have many ideas for what we want in our store, but I believe that customer input can be very useful and as such I am happy to take suggestions. If there are things that you feel must be included in a good wine store and tasting room let me know. If there are things that you dislike and would not want in the ideal store, also let us know. Obviously it is our store, but we will take to heart all ideas and incorporate as many as we can. Thanks to all that will join us in this exciting journey.

My wife's birthday

Last Friday we went to the Palace restaurant in the Cincinnatian for my wife's birthday. They have a Prix fixe menu with two savory items from the menu and one sweet for $44.00. We both ordered appetizers and I had a chicken dish and my wife had a salmon dish. The food was exceptional. We chose a Verdicchio to have with our meal. This is a wine comes from the Marche region of central Italy on the Adriatic. More specifically it comes from the zone Castelli di Jesi. This particular example comes from a wine maker named Maurizio Marchetti. This is a vibrant white wine light enough to pair well with fish and chicken, yet it has enough body to hold up well with rich sauces. We both very much enjoyed this wine and finished it in the room with out accompaniment and it was just as good without food. This is a nice change of pace for a summer sipper. The restaurant price was $35 and I think it perhaps could be had for as little as $10 to $12 dollars retail. For those with a bit of adventure give it a try.

Our New Venture

After getting the short of the end of the stick on an attempt to purchase an existing wine store in Cincinnati, my wife and I decided to look for a building and open a wine store and tasting room from scratch. We have found a building in Mt Washington and will close on it within several weeks. We have purchased a liquor license, that we are in the process of transferring to our business. We have begun jumping through all of the other hoops to get to our opening day. It is our hope to be open with our store by mid September or early October. I have established a Facebook fan page "Water Tower Fine Wines and Tasting Room" and a Twitter acct. "wtfinewines". Both sites will have updates with progress and the twitter acct will have information on what wines I am opening each day, that can be sampled for a small fee. Please visit and follow these pages for updates and We will look forward to seeing you once we are open.

Great Value

Last Friday I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to join #TTL or twitter taste live. The featured winery was Clos LaChance and we were trying several of their entry level or Hummingbird series wines. Included were an unoaked Chardonnay Glittering- Throated Emerald 2008 Monterey Co., Cabernet Sauvignon Ruby - Throated 2006 Central Coast and finally Meritage Crimson Topaz 2007 Central Coast. First as a blogger, I was privileged enough to get these gratis. That said, I have no issues with pointing out if I do not like a wine, because what I may find a flaw may be desirable to others. First we tried the Chardonnay, which if tried blind all of those assembled would have sworn was a New Zealand Sauv Blanc. The wine had loads of citrus with hints of other tropical fruit, which to me was largely overridden by the grapefruit. I am not a fan of citrus/grassy sauv blancs, however this wine was very refreshing and would have been perfectly suited for a hot evening on the deck. Next we tried the Cabernet Sauvignon. This wine was great,particularly for the money (under $20). There was rich black raspberry flavors that coated my tongue. This wine outshone it's price point and left me wondering what their more expensive wines are like. Finally we dug into the Meritage. This also was a treat, with traces of red, black and blue fruit all melded into a harmonious blend of flavors that also lingered nicely in my mouth. I was really impressed with these wines which priced out from mid teens to mid twenties.
To me good values and though the chardonnay tasted more like a sauv blanc to me that should not be an issue for those who appreciate grapefruit and grass in their white wines. If you come across these wines or any others from Clos LaChance, I would not hesitate to try them as long as the price is right for you.

wine blogging wednesday

The topic this month is California Dreaming or remembering the first magical wine from California. My wife and I shared our development of wine appreciation. This was largely accomplished through a long series of tastings we attended at a now closed wine store in Cincinnati( The Mushroom ) from the mid 90's until they closed in the early 2000's. We were learning about wine at a time when California wines were still reasonable and when I look back at my tasting sheets from those days, I see many of the wines that today are considered cult wines and are substantially more expensive. The one wine that sticks out through all of that fantastic clutter is Bouchaine and their wonderful Carneros Pinot Noir. The wine, at the time was made by Eugenia Keegan, who is very highly respected as a wine maker. We had tried Bouchaine Pinot Noirs at 3 separate tasting and without remembering it, each time purchased another bottle. The price at the time was in the mid twenties, which was at the higher end for our wine buying habits of the time. Shortly after discovering the wine it changed dramatically and was almost not recognizable. We subsequently found that Eugenia Keegan had left the winery. There were many years were we stayed away from Bouchaine because it had changed so dramatically. Just last year however I attended a tasting of Bouchaine wines and was thrilled to find that the quality had returned and, though not the same as it had been, it was once again a very good Pinot Noir. Better still their base Pinot was still in the mid twenties price wise. This is still a special wine to my wife and I and will always hold a special place in the history of our wine enjoyment.