The Essential Wine Tool Kit

Seven must-haves for optimum wine drinking consumption

By Henri Schock

Our favorite corkscrew. We all have one, and without it we would be lost looking into an empty glass of nothing (unless you find a screw cap, of course). But once that cork has been pulled, what do you do with the bottle? Well, drink it of course! But, what’s the best way to consume this juice? What is the appropriate vessel to put it into? What do you do with half drunken bottle on that off chance you don’t finish it? And, with all this wine you’ve been drinking, how on earth will you begin to remember what each bottle was like?

As a carpenter with his tools, a wine drinker needs the proper gear to guarantee that every experience is a pleasant one. Forget all that gimmicky shit you’ve seen; this is the real deal—your essential tool kit for the everyday wino.

Wine Cocktails: Becoming Your Own Mixologist

Wine Cocktails

Time to MAN UP

Whether you’re into the vino, or into the booze, you can get your high-society drink on in a big way with wine cocktails. No ordinary hooch, wine cocktails expand far beyond the sangria and mimosas you’re used to on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings.

Author A.J. Rathbun has devoted one of his many beverage books to the fine art of wine cocktails, and he calls it, appropriately, Wine Cocktails: 50 Stylish Sippers that Show Off Your Reds, Whites, and Rosés. What else would you call a ninety-six page tome full of salavacious libations featuring wine as the main ingredient?

Label of the Month: Sapolil Cellars “Papa Loves Mambo”

SAPOLIL CELLARS
PAPA LOVES MAMBO

Art is just so damn subjective, wouldn’t you agree? There’s really no other way to start a thought when hoping to discuss objectively the merits of an “artist series” wine label such as the one above by Walla Walla’s Sapolil Cellars. While there are some timeless pieces that we all seem to agree are worthy of pure objectively, things like “Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh and the “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci, it becomes a little more difficult to come to an overall positive consensus on, say, your nephew’s finger painting mounted on the refrigerator. Adorable as it may be, it sucks.

Artist series labels sometimes scratch the art critic itch in all of us, which would seem to throw all of the otherwise complementary marketing efforts to the wind. “Here is my heavier-than-average-bottle, my glass topper, my Red Mountain fruit, and a label that was done by my dog.” It just doesn’t make sense.

O Wines

O Wines
Stacy Lill and Kathy Johanson

If you’ve ever had a mentor, raise your hand. If you’ve ever had a mentor who sells wine to raise money enough to help put you through the college of your choice, get up, do a dance and thank your lucky stars.

O Wines, the brainchild of Stacy Lill and Kathy Johanson, does just that—a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of their “O Wine” goes to assist low-income, high-potential girls from disadvantaged walks of life in pursuing their dreams of higher education. Fittingly, the “O” stands for “opportunity.” Partnering with the College Success Foundation here in Washington, the O Wines Endowment is combined with other such scholarships and awards, allowing those aided by the CSF to attend nearly any school they choose.

Label of the Month: Trust Cellars

Trust Cellars

When we go to pick out our Label of the Month, it typically involves fussing through the isles of a Whole Foods, moving from the elegant-and-blasé of classic Euro-packages to homogenized, animal-driven, rainbow-color-paletted garbage that has been making the Aussie’s millions since the first magnum hopped off the boat. Then, after the mind’s canvas has been put through an aesthetic ringer, we take it over to the Northwest aisle and see what we might.

Blogroll

You spend way too much time online, and you know it. You’re pretty sure there’s a clinical condition for what’s become an illness; but you’ll never admit a problem, and neither will your doctor, who’s also online way too much. So, being as you’ll probably check your email after reading this magazine, why don’t you add these wine blogs to your list of on-line to-dos? Welcome to:

The wine blogs you should be reading :

Rank and File

Positioning Washington among the Nation’s top wine producers and consumers

We in Washington are typically very proud that we’ve become the second largest wine-producing state in the country, behind California. And, really, that is something to be proud of. No one would have imagined it thirty or forty years ago, except maybe for Walter Clore himself. We have discovered, though, that ranking the states proves to be a difficult yet interesting task.

Smersh Design

“I enjoy using unexpected materials in my work,” says Frances Smersh of Smersh Design. “Placing cork into the context of jewelry makes people take a second look.” We have to agree. Smersh, who has been creating jewelry and specially designed lines of work for almost twenty years, has taken home awards for her designs that combine sterling silver, freshwater pearls and, get this, concrete. How cool is that? What really caught our attention are the sterling silver and natural cork cuff links. One-up fellow winos at your next stuffy engagement with something so unique that you’ll be elevated to a new level of cool.

Frances and husband John opened Click! Design That Fits, a boutique store located in West Seattle, to host her wares as well as plenty of other chic wine-related merch. Some of what they offer includes a nifty set of cheese knives and plates, Swedish wine glasses, ultra-modern wine glass tags, and platinum champagne flutes that are “sold to hold, elegant to behold.”

Label of the Month: Beresan 2006 Carménère

By Jameson Fink

Beresan 2006 Carménère

Working in the retail wine industry, I have about zero tolerance for another wine label with an animal on it. I will, however, make a notable exception for the Beresan Carménère.

The inclusion of an animal on this label is not a marketing vehicle dreamed up in some conference room brand-building session. The white owl rendered in broad brushstrokes really stands out against the dark letter.

Gift Ideas

Riedel Sommeliers Blind Tasting Stemware

Ok, ok, so we’ve talked about Riedel’s blind tasting glasses in a previous issue, but it just begs to be brought up again during this season of gift giving. Rather, this glass is so badass that it actually threatens to be mentioned again. Sexy, sleek, and commanding only respect, this unique stemware can take your blind tastings with friends and enemies to the next level: the black as night, cold as Eisch level. Yeah, we went there. You can pick this stemware up online at various outlets.

How to best handle the inlaws

Scenario: You’ve been slaving away all day preparing various classes of meat-things for the incoming in-laws. Everything is going to plan, excepting for the wine. You’ve completely forgotten about chilling the wine. This is a problem because you just know that “Mother” will flip her new hair-do if you don’t hand her a glass of Chardonnay the moment she walks in the door. Hell, you’re gonna need one yourself. Alas, you’ve taken precautionary measures by aquiring for yourself a Cooper Chiller. Six mintues later everything is back on track. Now, where did you put Dad’s Knob Creek?

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