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Re: wine thread
fredk #416183 01/02/16 02:10 PM
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I'm the last guy you would ask about food and wine pairings but...

I have partial bottle of 2010 Monte Antico Toscana in the fridge and I felt like a glass of wine late last night. I don't usually drink full bodied reds on their own, so I decided to pair it with a bit of Red Dragon mustard and ale cheddar (Welsh Y Fenni).

The mustard/cheddar bite of this cheese was perfect for the wine.

If you can find this cheese, I highly recommend it even on its own.

The


Fred

-------
Blujays1: Spending Fred's money one bottle at a time, no two... Oh crap!
Re: wine thread
fredk #416255 01/04/16 08:15 PM
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Originally Posted By fredk
I gots a new toy. grin

But ...

... its empty cry

Storing wine in the hall closet is fine all winter, but it gets rather warm in the summer. I sometimes find myself holding back on a wine I really like because I don't know how long it will hold.

First world problem solved. smile

Edit: that screaming red wine on the top shelf is cranberry. My daughter loves it, but I find it too tart/acidic for strait up drinking. It does, however, apparently make a very good mulled wine. I'll let you know Sunday.


I have complete certainty you will fill it in due time.
We started with plain wood racking from CanTire. Nice little pine set that held 15 bottles. We then added a second one to increase our holdings to 30 bottles.
We never seemed to have enough storage.
Then we moved and built a cellar holding over 700 (and cost about the same as buying a 300 bottle specialty wine cooler).
I will never fill that one!

The temperature control is by far the largest variable to want to maintain consistently to ensure you keep and/or age your wines with less guessing as to whether they are turning to vinegar or have cork failures with seasonally fluctuating storage conditions.


"Those who preach the myths of audio are ignorant of truth."
Re: wine thread
chesseroo #416268 01/05/16 03:03 AM
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Yeah, I don't think I'll have any trouble filling it.

Temperature stability might be a bit of a challenge with this unit though. I did the usual reading/searching blitz on the internets before buying, and not one source raised the issue of temperature stability in these coolers. A number of sites even recommended the Danby as a good inexpensive starter.

Turns out this thing is a mini fridge with wine racking. It ranges up and down 10 degrees each cooling cycle. Silly me thinking that a lack of mention of this most critical parameter in any of the reviews meant that temp stability was not issue in any wine cooler.

The first thing I did was take my DOT thermometer and set it up in the fridge. I wanted to know what the top to bottom variation might be in this cooler (also about 10 degrees).

Now I'm curious to know how that might affect the wine, so I've concocted a little experiment using a cork, old wind bottle and my temp probe. Put water in bottle and cork. Shove probe through cork, place bottle in cooler and measure. Unfortunately the thermometer's resolution is only 1 degree so it won't be as accurate a measure of temperature change as I would like, but still it will tell me something.


Fred

-------
Blujays1: Spending Fred's money one bottle at a time, no two... Oh crap!
Re: wine thread
michael_d #416322 01/07/16 05:16 PM
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I would be curious to see if the cooler has that much of an internal swing in temps.
Our cellar runs +/- 2C such that the bottles won't change in temp before the unit kicks on again.
I hold the cellar at 14-16C. The cooling unit can do as low as 12 and as high as 18C.

Our unit is a few years older but is a Koolspace brand similar to this model:
http://www.rosehillwinecellars.com/kools...53unai98p8b4a93

Your experiment to put a probe through a cork into a bottle and measure high and low max values is sound.
Test at both the top and bottom racks as well.


Last edited by chesseroo; 01/07/16 05:17 PM.

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Re: wine thread
chesseroo #416325 01/07/16 05:36 PM
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I put the bottle in the night before last and let the internal temp stabilize. From monitoring last night, it appears to move between 56 and 57F, so it appears there is some temperature variation in the bottle. I'm going to check it again tonight to verify and then move it to the bottom shelf.

I've found a relatively cheap temperature controller ($26) that is used by beer home brewers. It has a built in 10 amp relay that may be OK for this fridge. It also has a cycle delay circuit that you can vary between 3 and 10 minutes, to protect your compressor from cycling on too quickly.

I would be happier if the relay was 15 amps as power draw on startup for a compressor motor can be quite high.


Fred

-------
Blujays1: Spending Fred's money one bottle at a time, no two... Oh crap!
Re: wine thread
michael_d #435045 01/05/20 05:53 AM
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Short update for a thread bump.

Finally finished the oldest of the white chardonnays sitting in the cellar.
Opened a 2005 Cakebread last weekend. Surprisingly it was in good shape.They always lose a lot of fruit when aged so personally i'm thinking of holding chardonnays for no more than 5 years now.

https://www.winebid.com/BuyWine/Item/Auction/113331/2005-Cakebread-Chardonnay
https://www.wine.com/product/cakebread-chardonnay-2005/88253


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Re: wine thread
michael_d #435052 01/05/20 05:37 PM
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M
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Hey Chess. Good to see you still around.

14 years or so in the bottle is a long time for a Cakebread Chard. They do not build their chards for aging, but for immediate gratification. Pretty common for most (if not all) Napa chardonnay. If you move up the mountains, and visit Mayacamas, for example, you'll find a winery that utilizes old world/old school winemaking techniques, and builds their wines for aging. They recommend cellaring their chards for two to three decades. I buy Peter Michael wines (Knight's Valley), and have a vertical going that starts out at 07, (when I started buying their wines). This includes their chardonnay's, Pinot Noir, and Cab Savs. Their Chard's still taste fantastic with 10 years of age. A lot of the Russian River Valley chardonnay's will cellar for over ten years as well. Willamette Valley (Oregan) chard's and Pinot's will also cellar for a good bit longer than Napa.

Re: wine thread
michael_d #435068 01/06/20 10:40 PM
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Oh i'm still around, just busy with work travel and family everything (sports mostly). I read a bit but have far less time to post. Still looking at changing around some A/V gear in a major way in the next year though.

True, many of these wines are not meant for cellaring and in the latest tasting notes for the Cakebread chardonnays it doesn't mention anything, but the label on the back of this 2005 specifically stated it had the potential for good ageing. On some later years it specifically stated ageing 3-5 years so i could use that as their benchmark thoughts on it.
https://www.cakebread.com/wines/release/napa-valley-chardonnay-2010
https://www.cakebread.com/system/uploads/release/fact_sheet_pdf/43/09_CH_w_logo.pdf
Typically i will buy two bottles, open one right away and if there is astringency, sharp acidity, or heavy alcohol or other negative traits, i'll leave the second bottle to age for a bit and see what happens with it (red or white).

Normally i would not have held onto it for much beyond 6 or 7 years but i'm a bit behind on drinking the 'old' bottles in the cellar. One waits sometimes for too long to find the right occasion and next thing you know you've got old bottles you are worrying about going bad.

A friend who has some bottles in our cellar is seriously in danger of that circumstance. A BC pinot noir from 2006, a Conundrum from the same era (this is the newer bottle but i believe it is the same thing: https://www.lcbo.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/en/lcbo/conundrum-white-2016-694653)
Some of these were not meant to be cellared at all and i fear he's going to find vinegar in a few of them.

I think the oldest bottle of red i have is a 2002 Lehmann's Mentor followed by a 2004 Wolf Blass Black Label (this is a beautiful ageing wine).
The oldest white might be a 2002 Zen Zen riesling. It is a 30-year ager according to Dr. Zen Zen himself.


"Those who preach the myths of audio are ignorant of truth."
Re: wine thread
michael_d #437208 06/19/20 08:14 PM
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Going to give this a try tonight.
https://www.vivino.com/d-arenberg-the-laughing-magpie-shiraz-viognier/w/13402

Been a fan of the d'Arenburg wines. They have a variety of signature characters, smoothness, refinement and reasonable price to quality that i find to be excellent.

And someone put a tasting on youtube, But i think the guy needs a bigger glass because his can only fit half the bottle.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1Mfq38a5DE

Last edited by chesseroo; 06/19/20 08:16 PM.

"Those who preach the myths of audio are ignorant of truth."
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