RomRaider

This is certainly not related to RomRaider, nor to tuning, however I fail to see a purely off-topic lounge style forum section, so I'll risk unlikely nazi deletion and post this here:

On the right is the Ebano reserva, gorgeous!!! The crianza isn't worth bothering with, not even good, however the reserva is a deep purple with a typically fruity ribera del duero flavour. Recommended.



A good wine, available almost everywhere, the marques de riscal reserva is an enjoyable drop, typical of a rioja reserva, full bodied, not shy.



The wine on the left is delicious. The bouquet is non-existent, but the taste is smooth and so easy to drink, you could knock back a few bottles in a night, if you could continue to keep a firm grip on the crystal from which it came.



Tonight's wine resides only in the camera, so, sadly, I can not post it now. I shall endeavour to do so tomorrow for the forum member who confessed to enjoying red wines :-)

Until then, adios!

Fred.

Finally an Off Topic on this forum!

Hey Fred,

I must admit, I dont drink a lot of wine nowadays. But I remember cracking a bottle of red one night as I used to do, each night, after my wife had left me etc etc.(shes back now) I was chatting away online to all my new girlfriends thinking this is the best bottle of wine I have ever drunk. I just wish I could remember what it was called, because after that nothing ever tasted as good so I didnt really drink much wine after that.
I brew my own beer now Fred but if I can ever remember the name of that bottle of red, I just might be converted back.
Have one for me.

I prefer Spirits but I prefer a local Shiraz or Yellowglen Vintage Bella, which is an exceptional White/Pink

Spirits?
Austrian(not Australian) Stroh Rum 80(160 proof) which tastes like Rum & Raisin Ice Cream if you ignore the wicked kick and warm glow in your stomach.
Jim Beam Devils Cut
Agwa

gh-hoon, if you remember, post about it here for me :-)

tps-happy, I love a good ozzy or kiwi syrah/shiraz and/or petite syrah, and I miss them a bit over here, but these Spanish wines are wonderful in a different style.

My wife got given one of these as a gift at work, 1.5 litre magnum of 2004 Remelluri; we drank (most of) it with a friend the other night, really nice. A smokey flavour, but not at all over the top, it was just right. This one runs about 30 euros/45usd here, so typically priced for a nice rioja reserva.



Feels a bit more manly pouring from the 1.5 litre bottle, too :-)

Fred.

I have the labels from every bottle of wine I've drank over the last four years tucked away in a wine book describing each winery and the good/bad years of their various batches.
There are so many and such a wide variety that I can't say that any one is a favourite, but there are a few that I go back to regularly. Recently a couple of different Cabernet Sauvignon from Beringer: Stone Cellars & California Collection
And a Bordeux from Château Ducla.

I'm just scared of lower end new-world wine because too often they put it in a vat with oak-chips to give it flavour, which just makes it harsh. Oak barrels have the opposite effect, smoothing and rounding the wine out. The cheaper stuff here doesn't see oak at all, which is vastly preferable than the wood chip approach :-/

The Ebano: 13 months in barrels
The Marques de Riscal, I can't recall, but in the 12-24 range, checked their site, 24 months.
The Dinastia Vivanco: 24 months
The Remelluri: 17 months

My (95% successful) recipe for a good wine is this:

The right grape varieties: Tempranillo, Syrah/Shiraz, Cab Sav, Grenache, in that order.
The right time in oak: 12-24, in that order, though some outside of that range are lovely too.

Gran reservas aren't my favourite, though they are nice to enjoy, I prefer the slightly younger, but still appropriately aged reservas more.

This helps the price of well built euro-wine stay reasonable:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_lake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Bord ... n_Bordeaux

I've found that new-world stuff with good barrel time is more expensive. That, to me, at least, makes the euro stuff better value.

My 2c, or 10eu, as it were :-)

Fred.

I agree on the oak chips. I've tried that in the wine I make and it is terrible. I much prefer it have none than a forced oak flavour. I think the last batch I made (three years ago now) actually has a hint of walnut rather than oak.

ROFL!!! Thanks for putting a smile on my face.

BTW, I forgot to say: WOW re the book with labels! I've taken a similar but more modern approach with digital photos of nearly every bottle, but only for the last 5 or so years. If I'm ever in your neighbourhood, I'm swinging past to (attempt to (politely)) demand a look :-)

Fred.

You can't feel the texture of the label using a photo!!!

There's quite a few considering two bottles a week. We don't keep duplicates unless the label changes design or is from a different year.

That's certainly true! :-) I try to keep all of the bottles, however that's always doomed to a dumping session at some point. Here was my collection (no duplicates) just before we moved from the last flat into this one:



It took a while of rapid fire one bottle at a time throwing into the recycle bin out the front, too!

:-)

The campo viejo gran reserva on the left end which is silver for older years and yellow for more recent stuff, is a nice drop too. Also, very very common around the globe, but once again, not in NZ.

Some of the other bottles were lovely and others were horrible. The price range is 1-15euro :-)

Fred.

The room under the stairs(Harry Potter style) has my bottle collection, 483 so far. One of every spirit bottle I have drank

Nice to see that people around the world like spanish wines¡¡¡

Galicia! :-) I was at a wedding there early August last year, just after my own in Gibraltar! Unfortunately they served us Portugese wine, the 10th bottom from the left in the line :-) I met a young guy with a turbocharged Ford Sierra - Tell him that I said hi if you see it fly past :-)

The trouble with places with good wine, is that they mostly sell only their own. If you go into a supermarket in NZ you find HEAPS of ozzy and kiwi wines and maybe half a dozen foreign ones, max. Likewise here, there are very few non-Spanish wines floating around in a typical supermarket. Contrast this with the US (which does have nice wines) and they have acres from everywhere :-) England is good like that, too, decent kiwi, ozzy, spain, italy, cali, etc sections. Of course, I doubt the English make much wine, and if they do, I wonder who would buy it LOL.

If you use toasted oak cubes instead of chips in the right quantity (similar surface area to the inside of a barrel), you get the oak flavors without the harshness. It does take much longer than chips though, so cheapo wineries don't do it this way. They like to extend the usage of their barrels by adding oak chips or spirals when the barrels are spent.