Natural Cork is still used for nearly 60% of all wine bottle closures. Bottle corks are made from the bark of the Cork Oak tree found predominantly in southwestern Europe and northwestern Africa. Using either a single piece cut directly from the sheets of bark cork pieces pressed together, corks provide an impermeable seal in the neck of the bottle to prevent the wine from leaking out and from outside air getting into the bottle.

Cork wine closures became the accepted bottle closure of European vintners in the mid-17^th Century. Prior to that, wine bottles were closed using oil soaked rags. Use of natural cork allowed winemakers to keep their bottles of wine much longer. This allowed for aging and resulted in increased value in many wines.

In the 1990s, natural cork took a hit in popularity when new bottle closures began a wider acceptance. Synthetic corks, screw caps, zorks and others have created alternatives to the use of natural cork and correct the single drawback of using natural cork. Wines using natural cork must be stored on their sides in order to prevent the cork from drying resulting in a “corked” bottle of wine. A dry cork will allow air into the bottle, which will destroy the quality of the wine.

Here at Camelot Cellars Winery, we use both natural and synthetic corks for our bottles of wine. We are proud to be a part of the ReCork network. We will accept your used natural corks and send them to ReCork to be recycled into the soles of sandals and shoes.

Like Malbec, Carmenere is a grape that has enjoyed success elsewhere in the world but has been all put forgotten in its place of origin, Medoc in Bordeaux. It is one of 6 different grapes allowed by law into a Bordeaux red wine, but along with Malbec, the grape has seen a sharp decline in its planting throughout. Just like Malbec, though the grape has found a home in a new world country that has allowed the grape to really take off. In fact, our Chilean Carmenere is a great example of this forgotten old world grape.

Carmenere as a wine is more of medium bodied wine with a nice chocolate smokiness. In France, the climate did not allow for the grape to fully ripen so it was usually used as a blending grape, but in Chile the grape is produced by itself due to the hotter climate. This hotter climate adds brilliant tannins that don’t overwhelm the palate. In fact, Carmenere is genetically related to Merlot, but it differs in that Carmenere is actually later to bloom and ripen, which is why the extra sunlight in Chile helps this grape out.

Whether its from ‘His Bob-ness’ (Robert Parker), Wine Spectator or Decanter, chances are you have encountered a vintage chart in your wine consumption career and had no idea what it’s for and how to use it. It can be very confusing because the wine vintage charts do not necessarily convey the quality of the wine. Hopefully this will clear up when and how to use a vintage chart to purchase wine.

A vintage chart tells the consumer about the environmental impacts of the weather on a given years crops and the overall quality of the fruit as a result. Usually, critics will give the vintage as a whole a number, from one to one hundred, indicating the probability of producing great wine due to the weather conditions and the extraneous properties that make a great vintage. Previously stated, the vintage chart indicates the probability of producing great wine due to the weather, but does not mean the bottle you buy will be of the indicated quality. Usually, a vintage chart is good indicator of the quality of those super-premium wines that you want to put away for 10+ years. Those in great vintages will tend to age more gracefully, while those in not so stellar vintages tend to be made for more immediate consumption. Hopefully, this will provide some insight and knowledge on how to use a vintage chart.

So now that we have our wines picked out to age, we need to make the ideal place to store the wines. Typically, the wines need to be stored in a cool dark place with a nice humidity. This is ideally a basement or a personalized wine cellar. You don’t have to have any of these things to correctly store a wine, though. For starters, the bottles need to be stored on their sides to keep the cork moist. Secondly, make sure you rotate the bottle a half turn every 3 months or so. Next find some sort of enclosure to store your bottles. Put inside the enclosure a small cup of water that will need to be changed every couple of weeks or so. This makes the humidity higher to perfect the aging conditions. Try and put the enclosure somewhere that will have little variability in terms of temperature as well. Hopefully this is a good guide to aging wines and I hope to see you soon in Camelot Cellars.

I went to my hometown over the holidays and my mom made some of her world famous lasagna (and by world famous I mean within the small circle of my brother and myself, but it is delicious if you are reading this, ma). So as is tradition over the holidays, there was lots of leftover lasagna throughout the next few days. Over the next few days, we tried the lasagna again and realized that the lasagna was even better than it was right out of the oven. Hopefully by this point, you can see the basic principle of why you should wait to open that freshly purchased bottle of wine.

When you first pick up that bottle, there is no way of telling how far removed the wine is from being in the barrel. Once put in the bottle, the wine needs a bit of time to settle out both physically and chemically so that the aromas tend to blend together better as opposed to some aspect being sharper than others. Depending on the wine, the wine could need a month or two all the way up to a few years from bottling to settle out. The other reason to age wines is the evolution of the wine for a long period of time. Certain wines can drastically change over the course of years or decades. In the next installment, I will go over how to choose a wine to long term age, as well as how to age them.

Pinot Noir produces some of the finest wines in the world. Its light body and inky color make it one of the most desirable wines in the world. It is part of the Vitis vinifera species that includes Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Chardonnay. Some of the most important regions in the world produce Pinot Noir, such as Burgundy’s Cote-d’Or and the Russian River Valley in California. Here are some facts about Pinot Noir, which can help you impress your friends when you come into Camelot Cellars and get a glass of our Sonoma Valley Pinot Noir.

Pinot Noir gets its name because of its appearance. On the vine, Pinot Noir looks like black pine cones. ‘Noir’ means black in French, while Pinot is similar to the French word for pinecones. Because of its tight clusters, Pinot Noir is more susceptible to bunch rot and fungus infection.  This and its lack of cold hardiness make Pinot Noir a very difficult grape to grow, leading wine critic Jancis Robinson to call it ‘the devil’s grape’. Pinot noir makes a wine that is most famous in Burgundy, with wines like Domaine de la Romanée-Conti being considered the most expensive in the world. Pinot noir is also grown in areas like New Zealand, Chile, and Oregon, which have a wet climate and moderate temperatures. Pinot Noir also makes Sparkling wine in Champagne and a Rose’ throughout the world.

Chances are, if you have been keeping tabs on the wine industry in the last few decades you have been astounded by the meteoric rise of Argentinian wines. Most specifically, Malbec has taken the industry to heights that it had only imagined in years previously. In the past, Argentina had focused on the production of bulk and jug wine. In the last thirty years, the Malbec production has taken off much to the delight of the producers as well as consumers all around the world.

Malbec is actually a French grape that was brought over in the 1800’s, but it has some genetic variations to the Malbec grapes still in France (which is one of 6 grapes that can legally be put into the famous Bordeaux blends). That means one of two things; that the specific clone that was brought over to Argentina has been decimated by phylloxera in France or that the Argentinian Malbec has grown to accommodate the climate of Argentina. The differences of the clones are drastic when it comes to the wine it produces. Firstly, it is a smaller berry, which makes for a slightly less tannic wine. Argentine Malbec is known for its velvety mouthfeel and its dark fruit flavors, especially those that come from Mendoza, the world famous region among the Andes Mountains. Next time you come into Camelot Cellars, try our Argentinean Malbec as a prime example of Argentina’s most revered wine.

Late harvest and ice wines often have a sweetness that goes beyond the natural sweetness of the grape. Often, the wines are syrupy with an intense sweetness that also has a honeysuckle scent. This is due to the infection of the grapes by a fungus. This fungus, known as Botrytis cinerea, dries out the grape and causes it to shrivel and look like a spherical raison.
The shriveling does two things; the first is that it concentrates the solids inside of the grape.  This means that sugars become more intense and the flavors of the pulp is intensified. The second thing it does is dehydrates the grapes meaning that it will cause additional aromas due to the lack of water. All in all this makes for an incredibly concentrated grape, which is why it comes in half bottles. Our Riesling Ice, Peach ice and Cabernet Franc Ice Wines are all wines that display the unmistakable characteristic of Botrytis cinerea.

As we come closer to New Year’s Eve, we all will be cracking open the bubbly and recognizing the year behind us, as well as anticipating the year ahead of us. In some cases we will have a celebration of the great year behind us, while in others will hope it will be better in 2012. Either way, on New Years Eve the tradition to open Champagne dates back hundreds of years and literally millions of people will be doing so in the waning hours of December 31. Here is a little knowledge on Champagne that is sure to impress your fellow partygoers.

Champagne is actually a region in France that is the main producer of the sparkling. Because of this, the European Union is not allowed to call any sparkling wine Champagne unless it is indeed produced in Champagne. Here in the United States the appellation is frowned upon for American wines because it takes away from the US viticulture identity, although some producers still put it on their bottles to drive up sales. The effervescence is due to a secondary fermentation where producers will put in a rock of sugar followed by a specialized yeast. The bottle is then corked upside down and the cap is frozen to remove the wine from the lees (yeast and sediment). When poured, the wine bubbles revealing natural imperfections in the glass. If you are looking for a great example, come to our New Year’s Eve Venetian Masquerade Ball! There will bubbly and other great wines flowing till 1 am! See you there!

Sparkling wine goes with everything, so get a bottle!

Appetizer – Serve a light bodied white such as a dry Riesling, Pinot Grigio or an unoaked Chardonnay.

Entree’ – Because we tend to eat a lot of food around the Holidays, I always suggest lighter to medium bodied red wines such as Tempranillo, French Burgundy style wine, Bordeaux style or Pinot Noir.

Dessert – A nice Ruby Port or Ice Wine can stand on its own without dessert! But if you are having dessert, an ice wine is a nice compliment to any dessert.

And my overall thought always is drink what you like. There is no right or wrong answer. Don’t force yourself to drink something because it’s “in”. At the end of the day, wine is simply a beverage.

Janine Aquino, Proprietor