Got the email on the summer releases just this afternoon. Looks like an outstanding release.
I am (apparently) “not eligible to purchase this product.”
If you’re still in Utah then you’ve got your reason.
SoCal
Utah is a felony state to ship wine into, but if if you have an address SoCal, that’s supremely easy for us to ship.
And thanks @HudsonHawk for the kind words. Means a lot. We’re exited about this release as well. The Spenker Carignane is probably my favorite wine from the last couple of vintages.
Man, when I lived in North Carolina they had some of the most fucked up liquor laws in the country. Even worse than Texas. But Utah may take the cake.
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I believe cake is banned in Utah on Fridays.
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I live in Austin. Just visiting family elsewhere.
Did you give the OWA Brotherhood and He-Man Woman Haters Club Secret Hi Sign?
Shipping to Texas is easy. We have a number of folks on the Mailing List who live there.
I can indeed confirm my younger brother will ship his vino to Austin.
Just placed my order, bud.
Looking forward to enjoying some more FD.
Prost!
Thanks, bud!!
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Mom made me.
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So, not only am I in the business of helping people get intoxicated, I’m also literally saving lives:
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I am reminded of this piece of advertising gold.
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It’s funny because it’s true.
Also true: XXXX is shit.
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So, some bad news. My favorite Reidel white wine glass cracked from the heat today. I’m on the patio, drinking Albino Armani Pino Grigio, and crack. Never had that happen before. Sucks because it was one of the good glasses I have. Ratfarts.
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We’ve gone to a lot of Foodways Texas events over the years, and in February we went to Camp Vino in Fredericksburg. A lot of the panels and speakers were reasonably technical for a mostly non-technical crowd, and nobody much was overselling Texas wine. Mostly the panels were made up of producers and A&M folks. It was interesting to hear about what they had thought was working until it failed, what worked and produced good wines, and what didn’t work and was never going to work. And shelf space. Who knew shelf space would be interesting?
I liked Tannat (which I’d never heard of) and the Grenache-Syrah-Mourvèdre blends (which if I recall right is a fairly common Rhone Region blend). They also said that it was darn hard getting people to buy $40+ bottles of Texas wine. Fall Creek makes a nice GSM, and William Chris a good Tannat.
Texas wine has improved leaps and bounds since even ten or fifteen years ago. There was a state funded program at Texas Tech before the ‘08 recession looking into which grapes grew best in Texas (rather so many growers trying to copy Napa and California by planting varieties like Cabernet sauvignon which are totally unsuited to the climate). I believe the industry kept finding the program after the state stopped doing so because of budget cuts and is one of then reasons the quality of Texas wine is so much higher.
We were actually just hanging out with one of Kara’s close friends from Penn State where they both did undergrad and Master’s. Fritz lives in Houston and is the top viticultural consultant in the state (as well as Georgia and Arizona). It’s so interesting to talk to him because not only is one of the sharpest guys I know in the industry, but we also inhabit such different parts of the wine industry. He’s really all about teaching growers the fundamentals of planting vineyards and growing grapes whereas I’m working with so many old vineyards (often ~ 100 years and farmed by the same family for several generations) and varieties like Zinfandel that just aren’t found in Texas. Fritz works with a lot hybrids, btw.
I will also say that the last time I was in Fredericksburg I didn’t recognize the place. It was like a mini Las Vegas with the new tasting rooms and tourists. Been a hell of a long time since the Nimitz Museum was the town’s main attraction (which we inevitably visited on every trip home to Austin growing up because my dad was such a huge WWII buff).
FYI, Bending Branch is another winery who makes a very good Tannat. And yes, GSM’s are very traditional blends from Chateauneuf de Pape in Souther in France. Hugely popular as well in Australia and here in California.
Oh man, that such is a bummer. Really sorry to hear that. I’ve broken heaps of wine glasses in my time, mostly through my own stupidity or lack of dexterity, but I’ve never had one break because of ambient temps.
We typically use a universal glass from Mark Thomas at home that works exceedingly for whites and reds. Spiegelau (subsidiary of Riedel) makes machine blown white and red wine glasses that rival many of their hand blown crystal counterparts. Worth checking out if you’re looking a replacement.d
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