Yuk! Can I send back this wine ?

Kendra, my wife, looked at me over her glass of champagne and said, “What’s wrong?” We were in an upscale hotel bar in San Francisco and I must have been contorting my face after my first sip of a Sonoma zinfandel.
“Do you want to send it back?” she asked?
“I’m afraid I can’t.” I said.

It was cold and raining outside. A perfect night for a zinfandel. I already had one unremarkable glass of zin at the bar and was looking for something with more oak and spice to warm me up. But this glass was beyond disappointing. There were no pepper, smoke, or even fruit aromas. It simply offered one bad odor.

But, the wine wasn’t corked or oxidized. It didn’t smell like wet newspapers, old dog, sherry, or vinegar, so technically I had no cause to send it back. However, the wine was flawed with a Brettanomyces infection (or “Brett” in hip wine speak).

What does Brett smell like? Brett can produce several compounds that produce different aromas. They are, and smell like:

- 4-ethylphenol: Band-aids, barnyard, horse stable, antiseptic
- 4-ethylguaiacol: Bacon, spice, cloves, smoky
- isovaleric acid: Sweaty saddle, cheese, rancidity

At low levels, some of these compounds can be quite pleasant (like spice, cloves, and smoke), however at high levels the wine can become undrinkable. The Sonoma zin I was served smelled like it was stored in a warm beach ball then tapped through an old garden hose into my glass.

Although possible, those aromas didn’t just happen in the bottle. The wine probably tasted like this while in the barrel. Why would the winery bottle this wine? Worse yet, why would the wine buyer for this hotel bar purchase at least a case of it? Did the buyer not taste this wine? Did the buyer get a great deal and thought the bar could pass it off to unsophisticated wine drinkers?

Ponderous.

What was I to do? You’re not suppose to send back a wine you don’t like. You can, however, send back a wine you don’t like if it was recommended to you by the server/sommelier. But, alas, I adventured out on to this limb by myself.

I could have tried to pull rank as a wine maker and explained why the wine was so foul and demanded a different wine. But I did not. I did the only think I could do. I ordered the smokiest, single-malt Scotch on the menu and burned that band-aid taste out of my mouth!

Clare-ly someone needs a cab!

There is a lovely, retired couple living here in Cambria that are dedicated Moonstone Cellars wine club members. Like many of their generation, they do not have a computer. The bad news about that: they miss out on our periodic email notices and offers. The good news: I can blog about them.

But just in case, let’s call them Ken and Barbara. Ken is the red drinker and Barbara, well, enjoys just about everything. Ken loves our Cabernet Sauvignon and refers to it (and all Cabernet Sauvignons as “Cabbies”). He also really digs our Merlot. He can’t get enough of either.

The other day, Ken asked me, “Are you ever going to make a claret?” Before I could answer, he said “I just love that grape but I don’t see much of it around here.” As many of you can attest, it’s right about here where I jump in and start explaining the origin of grapes, what we grow around here, and any other relevant educational tidbits.

I revealed to Ken “claret” is just a name the English uses to refer to red Bordeaux wines. Thus, every time he drank his beloved “Cabbie”, or a Merlot, or for that matter a Cabernet Franc, Petite Verdot, or Malbec, (or any blend of these) he was drinking a “claret”.

Ken nodded and said, “Yeah, but, such-and-such winery had a claret and only one other winery around here had a claret. They don’t make ‘em anymore. What a shame. I don’t know what it is, but I just love those clarets. I wish more wineries would make wines from that grape.”

I made (I thought) another well-reasoned explanation of what a claret is and Ken said, “Yeah, but it’s the claret grape I really like.”

I gave up.

I’m not sure if, a) I’m a bad wine educator, b) Ken is just “set in his ways”, or c) I should've call Ken a cabbie!

So there’s good news and bad news for Ken. The bad news: Ken doesn’t understand “claret” is just another term for a wine made from the red grapes that originated from the Bordeaux region. The good news is that Ken lives in a region that grows the Bordeaux varietals extremely well. Whether he knows it or not, with every sip of our Cab or Merlot, he’s enjoying his beloved claret. Perhaps I should make a special label just for him.