AnuvaBlog

Walking into The Beaumont on 150th last night, I felt at ease with the marble inlay and incredible decor of this gorgeous apartment building. My comfort and Janis’s wonderful ability to host (and project her voice) made this evening quite wonderful and enjoyable for all comers.

Although we did have a sock lady with lights on her ankles leave without trying any wine. Hmm. I got over that in about 3 seconds though, as we did have so many that were really appreciative.

Thankfully, we got an extra hour of sleep too.

Thanks Akasha and Kelly so much for having us over.

It was a birthday party atmosphere last night with much discussion about how we select our wines and how we import them.  Anecon Torrontés seemed to be the early favorite but it was surpassed by Mudai Pinot Noir and the Don Juan Reserve.

We sang happy birthday toward the end as I quickly though over the idea of wine pairings with the cupcakes that were present. What goes with pink frosting over vanilla cake?

Many thanks to Matt and Tatiana for organizing this event in their lovely home.

Lourdes was especially excited to have an even closer view of the Empire State Building which glowed red last night.

We had a full menu to go with the usual smattering of Torrontés, Bonarda, Malbec and other wines. Especially popular was the Mudai Pinot Noir. We found some great cheese combinations with the Bonarda especially. Combining the Bonarda with the brie we decided–after a supremely intellectual discussion of the subject of food/wine combining (”Eat what tastes good”)–brought out a decidedly pronounced black cherry flavor on the palate. A wonderful experience.

Equally wonderful was the dark chocolate with the Don Juan Reserve blend.

All the great food combining brought up the subject of biodynamic wines. We almost got Kelly to show us his biodynamic wine dance that evening, which apparently he may be taking off-Broadway shortly. He declined to comment how far off-Broadway.

First, thank yous to Carlos and Randy, two wonderful gentlemen who have been extremely generous and kind to us here at Anuva.

Last night saw a small gathering of friends and neighbors at Carlos’ house, exemplifying exactly what wine is all about: bringing together good people and good conversation. After getting the rooftop tour from Carlos, which was a delight for Lourdes’ first day ever in NYC, we went downstairs to pour wine. (Said Carlos as we traipsed his Zen styled roof terrace (from left to right in a near 360 degree panorama): “…the Empire State building, the Chrysler building, Mid-town, downtown, Martha Stewart’s house, Calvin Klein’s house, Tom (Brady) and Gizelle’s house. Oh right, and Bono lives there.”)

Besides the Zaino and Cavagnaro Malbec’s, and the Reserve Don Juan which always capture the attention of our crowds, Mayol Bonarda got a lot of “wow’s” and “very nice’s” from our guests. I am convinced that this has to do with the unique nature of the varietal Bonarda in general. It is something that simply doesn’t exist in the U.S. on a broad level. We hope to change this.

The surprise last night was the arrival of Amy. How was I to know that they had invited former faculty from my high school to this gig? After learning that she had switched from teaching English in Portland, OR (my home town), to becoming a professional photographer, we drank wine and continued the festivities.

It’s sample tasting time at Anuva, and we had 8 Malbecs yesterday, most from the high desert region of Salta, near the Bolivian border. Unfortunately, we were highly disappointed with yesterdays showing. Most were medicinal (overly so), undeveloped and unexpressive. Some were downright flawed. But this is the process that we so nobly suffer through at Anuva in order to bring you the best of the undiscovered wines of Argentina.

What included at this tasting a group of Chardonnay, that several winemakers/wineries insisted we try and were pleasantly surprised with one in particular. Urraca oaked Chardonnay is one Chardonnay that I might consider putting into the wine club. I always hesitate to put Chardonnay(or Cab-Sav for that matter) into the club as they are two varitals that are produced in enormous quantities in other regions of the world.

But this buttery-as-hell Chardonnay was really quite enjoyable. As full as a white wine can get, with a supple texture and oozing butter aromas and buttery taste (along with some green apple and a nice dancing feel on the palate), we were quite pleased with this wine.

We shall see if it becomes the first Chardonnay varietal to make it into the club.

People see the words “Reserve” and “Grand Reserve” printed on wine labels all the time. Anuva also has many wines that are designated with these titles. But what does that really mean?

The only way to really compare a reserve wine to another wine is to compare the wines that one winery makes. For example, one should compare Cavagnaro Malbec to Cavagnaro Reserve Malbec when attempting to discern relative quality. The reason for this is that each winery uses the word reserve in its own way. This term, in fact, is completely overused in the wine industry, as many huge wineries will simply put the word reserve or “Vintner’s Reserve” on every single bottle of the lowest quality wine they produce. This is simply a marketing tactic and in this instance the word reserve means nothing.

Many wineries have now started using the term “grand reserve”, “icon wines” or “flagship wines”to denote their higher level productions because the word reserve by itself is so overused. Another term that has been used often is “cuvée” but this is more of a “special batch” or a particular vat that the winemaker has noticed is superior to the rest of his wine of that vintage. The key again, though, is to compare this to the “normal” wine that that winery produces. If no “normal” counterpart exists that costs less than the “reserve” or “cuvée” of a particular winery, be careful, it’s probably a marketing tactic only.

Originally, however, the term was used to denote wines of special quality that the winemaker would “reserve” for further aging or for a special occasion rather than put directly on the market. The most important part of making any wine is of course, the grapes. Reserve quality grapes must be of lower yield, higher density (in sugars, tannins, acid and polyphenols–i.e. the stuff that makes good wine) than their “introductory line”, “entrance line”, or “classic line” counterparts.

Higher quality grapes are harder to grow and must be managed more carefully. They also make wines that stand up to oak aging better, and thus are usually given more time in oak, new oak especially, since this will add complexity and other favorable characteristics. Many over-oaked wines that are deemed reserve or grand reserve by their makers,  are made with grapes of insufficient quality to stand up to oak and result in wines where one feels like one is chewing on wood instead of drinking a luscious, complex wine.

Another typical characteristic of true reserve wines is that after oak aging they will be left to age in the bottle for sometimes up to several years before being released to the market.

Clearly, the difficulty and rarity in growing/harvesting of higher quality grapes and the costs involved in barreling and aging drive the price of reserve wines up. But remember, price has nothing to do with quality directly. I have tried many a famous wine that costs well above 100 dollars retail that has not only disappointed me, but come in behind wines that cost 1/3 of the price in blind tastings.

Needless to say that the king of determining wine quality, ultimately, is you and you alone. Ignoring what the label says and doing blind tastings is the only true way to determine your preferences. So compare the classics to the reserves to the grand reserves to the cuvées  and see what you find.

Sometimes you just have to go back to the basics. Friends, food, wine.

So we invited over some people, pulled out some of our wines and had a relaxing and lovely evening. One of the greatest things about wine is its ability to be talked about and at the same time talked over.

To illustrate: the evening began with many questions about our wines and our wine club (like what is Don Juan? How did Anuva start? What does the word Anuva mean? etc.) and then progressed into a conversation over many different things, the most notable of which, in my mind, is powers of ten.

Most of you I’m sure know that powers of a number, mathematically, indicate that that number is multiplied with itself the number of times of the power. For example 10^4=10×10x10×10, or 7^3=7×7x7. The importance here is that when talking of powers of 10, once passing 2 powers of 10 or so, a human’s ability to really comprehend how big those numbers are loses touch with reality. (To exemplify this, try laying out 10 paperclips (10^1), then 100 (10^2), then 1000 (10^3). It’s very easy to write the number 10^3 but much less easy to really grasp how much that number really means).

This subject came up in relation to Alan Greenspan’s book The Age of Turbulence. In the book, Greenspan talks about how he was happy to learn that the U.S. Government used the same notation on their financial documents as the big companies that he worked for in his private consulting business. On these documents, when a figure listed as “$0.1″, this was to indicate $100,000,000. The reason for this is simply to save paper. Writing all those zeros takes up a lot of room and also.

But more importantly, this indicates, in my mind, a very big problem with how people like Greenspan, and other central bankers, view as significant figures (definition here). If people like him use 0.1 to denote 100 Million, and then 0.01 to denote 10 Million, etc., they are completely out of touch with reality. What I mean by out of touch with reality, is that since 0.1=100 Million Dollars, and 1.0= 1 Billion Dollars, and since the vast majority of the figures they are going to be dealing with would look something like “10.4″, or “16.75″, or “1.245″ at the most, this means that they do not care about anything in the 100’s of thousands of dollars (and perhaps in the Millions as well since I don’t know if they carry their figures to 3 decimal places).

As we drank our wine, we pondered what it would be like to have 100’s of thousands of dollars not be important on the financial documents of the people making the most important financial decisions in the world. I do understand, of course, that the 100’s of Billions of dollars that they deal with are much more important than the 100’s of thousands that I deal with , but I can’t help but think how much the way they simply write the numbers could affect their thinking. $100,000 could feed a lot of people, buy a lot of books or clothes, or provide other forms of care for people in need.

This is where wine took us last night.

What a kind and generous man, Zach Everett. He and his lovely wife Robin invited over several guests and the Anuva team to present some of our wines. The Mayol Bonarda turned out to be the hit of the evening.

Ostensibly the reason for this I see, is that the Mayol Bonarda has many distinct characteristics not found in many “common” varietals. This Bonarda in particular has quite an aroma of juicy fruit in the nose and stays consistent in the mouth, has a very nice structure and medium-full body. All in all its a crowd pleaser. This wine I think is the one that drove several people to become members of Anuva right then and there.

And all this on top of a Celtics championship over the Fakers… what a splendid evening it was.

Last night, about 14 people attended an Anuva wine tasting and sampled Hom, Anecon, Uruco, Cavagnaro and Don Juan. We are very pleased to say that many of them are now members. It never ceases to amaze me how many people like all of our wines for different reasons:

Full bodied Reserves

Fruit forward Malbecs

Exclusive, hard to find wines

Unique varietals

Velvety wines

Easy to drink wines

These were the top reasons I heard last night. It also never ceases to amaze me how a group of strangers can come together over wine. It can start as the topic of discussion and then become the “title” of a given memory. E.G. “Do you remember when we had that Cavagnaro Malbec Reserve with Al and Nancy from the Bay Area? What a great night that was. The wine was so earthy and full of red fruit and I remember how that started a discussion on whether California wineries will be able to… what a good time that was.”

Last night was very similar. We discussed the terroir of Argentina, the culture, the winemaking culture, business practices and then, a whole slew of things ranging from food pairing to Argentine politics (yikes) to my wedding plans. I appreciate everyone’s company lat night and I hope to have more tastings like this because they are not tastings. They really are events where people come together over wine, and I get to truly enjoy my job.

I find that themes are the best for this. Regions, varietals, vertical tastings (different vintages of the same wine), food pairings, etc. all work nicely because they naturally generate a topic of discussion.

Once you have decided on the theme then you have to decide on the price. I also find that themes or plans work well here. If you are doing 5 wines you could select 5 from the 25-30 dollar price range or one at 15, 20, 25, 30, and 35.

Glassware is key. When you do 4-5 wines, which a decent tasting should be (as these are good numbers to give a lot of variety but not so much as to overwhelm people), you need to have a glass for each wine. This will allow people to compare colors, bouquets, tastes and textures of wines side by side. It is much harder to sample, then finish one wine, start a new one and then compare through memory.

Also, having a glass for each wine will allow people to experience how wines open. One should go through and smell and taste all the wines once or twice, leaving at least two more sips in each glass. Then when finished with the first pass, go back and sample again to find the more secondary and tertiary characteristics of each wine.

Of course, food will be an integral part of any wine tasting experience. More on this later…