Nico returns to show Italy!!! Special WineBar platter! More!

Good morning and welcome to another wine steward video. Thank you so much for watching and thank you especially for walking through that door downstairs and doing some business with us either on the sales floor or upstairs here at the wine bar. I want to tell you first about something happening up here on the wine bar mezzanine that will not be our typical routine. In other words, this mezzanine gets repurposed about twice a month for a sit-down presentation RSVP only tasting slash sales event. I emphasize the word sales because this is the best way to buy wine in my opinion because you get to learn about it, you get to taste it at the same time, and then you get to purchase it. You can leave an order behind that evening to obtain the best pricing possible on these wines you've just tried and learned about. So what a great combination of features for wine buying. I want to tell you that on August 25th, that would be about two weeks from now, a little less than that, we are going to present to you the country of Italy to the tune of maybe 12 or 13 different wines. The person doing the presenting will not be me but another guy with a shiny head, a gentleman named Nico whom some of you have met already. Nico represents Vias Imports and he is a great speaker and a lover of wine, knows Italy through and through because he's actually from there and Nico is in charge of this event. If you're not asking enough questions, I'll be the moderator asking him questions but I'll especially be pouring wines on his behalf from, like I said, Italy, all over Italy, delicious whites and reds from that particularly delicious wine country. Perhaps this will appear, this is Fossicoli Brunello di Montalcino and this is in fact imported by Nico's company. The reason why we're having Nico is A, he's good at it and B, we've had him do it at least two or three times up here before and so we have some momentum with this guy. A lot of you know and admire him already so you're bound to sign up for this event, I imagine. Some of you know Nico, like him and want to come back for more, right? So perhaps some Brunello di Montalcino, I know we'll have Tuscan wine of some kind, I know we're going to go to Piemonte three times for Barolo and Barbaresco and it's just going to be a tour of Italy, especially well shown because I won't be doing the presenting, we'll have Nico doing it. So again 6 30 p.m on August 25th, that's a Tuesday evening, can't wait to see you there. How do you get to come? You have to be one of the first 28 to RSVP for this event and you do that by going to thewinesteward.com and grabbing your seat and hopefully if you're wise and know that Italian wines are especially appreciative of food, you will also order the cheese and charcuterie platter that is designed to go along with that evening's wines. One more time, August 25th, it's Nico showing us Italy. All right, let us now tell you about a gin that we've already told you about before but the big news is it comes now in this size, the 700 milliliter, the formal size and because so many of you are loving it, we thought we would offer you better value by also comparing their liter size of Nordeis. Nordeis gin comes from Galicia, Spain and even includes in the distillation Aberrino grapes. Aberrino is of course the most famous white wine grape variety of Galicia, Spain. It's probably Spain's most famous white wine and now it is employed in this gin. A gin that, especially because the Spanish love a gin and tonic, is going to be especially good with a can tonic as they would say. That's how they pronounce it but just telling you that this gin that you probably already enjoyed now comes in two sizes depending on how into it you are. All right, let's tell you about what's going on in the wine bar this week. We are tasting a white wine that is pretty clever and delicious. I'm not going to show you quite all the wines but perhaps if I put up this white wine made of a red grape called Pinot Noir and this white wine made of a grape called Pinot Grigio and this wine made of a grape called Pinot Blanc or Pinot Bianco if you were having it from Italy and this wine made of Pinot, oops, Pinot Gris from Oregon, what have I just said frequently is the word Pinot. Yes, these all have the word Pinot, of course, in the name but they're all related to good old Pinot Noir. Did you know that? So we're going to have a five-line flight where all of the wines begin with the word name Pinot. Pinot Noir, of course, but a white wine made thereof and we're going to have a Pinot Gris and Grigio which are the same grape but depending on which culture is rendering it they employ one name or the other and then a Pinot Bianco or Pinot Blanc. This one is Blanc because it comes from Alsace, France. So a nice white flight. All of these, I believe, are no oak whites and great for this summer weather we're having. More refreshing than a big buttery oaky thing. So enjoy that white flight and then I want to point out that winter has I forgot to put the glass in front of us in front of you. I have devised a red wine flight where all of the wines do very very nicely in a New World Pinot Noir glass. A glass that you have certainly seen up on our wine bar before. If you're having red wine from us you're having it out of that glass or our Cabernet Merlot glass and they are differently. It's very very interesting to see what glass shape does to the scent and flavor of a wine. It seems that everyone out there prefers one glass or the other and if you were to have them side by side maybe we can do that for you. You would notice the difference. Anyway these red wines are from all over the place and yet they all do very very nicely in the red wine glass. The Pinot Noir New World Pinot Noir glass. So why wouldn't we show you at least one Pinot Noir? This is a beauty. This is made not in the thousands but the hundreds of cases. Very very small production from the Russian River Valley and it's a new one for us. This is called West of One Russian River Valley Pinot Noir Single Vineyard Kerosene Vineyard. It's richer, it's delicious, it is it's got that beautiful fruit and just a little bit of spice going on in there as well. All that fruit that you would anticipate from the Russian River is provided in this gorgeous small production Pinot Noir that is new to the shelf down there. West of One. Very very nice people. A young couple makes this like I said in the hundreds of cases. By the way I don't have it to put in front of you but also on our wine bar this week is their dry rosé made out of Pinot Noir from the exact same vineyard. A very nice rosé so you can actually try two wines from West of One this weekend. Another wine that goes very very nicely in a Pinot Noir glass is a wine that I would have thought would do better in a Bordeaux or Cabernet Merlot glass but in fact this Rioja really shines based on its beautiful fragrance in that other glass. So it is part of the fight that goes with the Pinot Noir glass and we have oh we gotta do this because we have a lot of it down there and a lot of you are really loving this wine that we made for the store. It is the Domaine du Pouze de Vie. It is a wine that we had a hand in making and a hand in growing as a matter of fact all of the Morelli fruits and it consists of Syrah and Grenache, Carignan, Malbed and believe it or not a little bit of Muscat the white grape gets into this as well. This is co-fermented what that means is everything is picked roughly at the same time. If we're picking these wines these grapes varieties a few days apart we simply chill down the ones we picked first until everything is picked and then they all get together in a vat and ferment together. Co-fermentation is not convenient but it can provide some extra character. It's kind of like I think it's cool that the wine gets married immediately instead of blending later so that is how this Domaine du Pouze de Vie is fairly uniquely made. A wine that you're already enjoying just letting you know we have plenty of this good stuff and we will therefore put it on the flight that is deserving of that New World Pinot Noir glass. I'm going to tell you about the sparkling wine we're doing this week. We've probably had this up in front of you before but I love to talk about alternatives to Champagne. Sparkling wine has really taken off around here. The other night at our Burgundy event we were showing a Premat de Bourgogne which simply means a sparkling wine made exactly like Champagne second fermentation in individual bottles the inconvenient way and we were very pleased with that wine. Well here is a wine made that same way that comes from northern Italy and it is the region a small region I think it's only about 7,000 acres total called Fracciocorta and Fracciocorta is it comes in rosé and it comes in blanc and this is an extra brut meaning it's a little drier than your typical brut very bracing I'm going to make sure right now oh yeah that is very very tasty. Fracciocorta employs the traditional Champagne grapes Chardonnay and Pinot Noir once in a while has a little bit of Pinot Bianco added to it but this one I believe is only Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. This is from Periluki. Periluki had a lot to do with getting Fracciocorta designated as a wine region back in 1961. That's the 61 there on the label. These guys produced the most Fracciocorta in that little wine region and did you know that only about 10 percent of Fracciocorta gets out of Italy. Italy has been charmed by this reply to Champagne that Italy is very very proud of now and they drink most of it. We got a little. All right I'm going to tell you now about a cheese platter that we were doing on our wine bar this weekend because it was so beloved the other night. I mentioned already that the other evening we were showing Burgundy. We actually had 14 different Burgundys the other evening for a group of 42 different people who were sitting up here. They had RSVP'd and we had this beautiful Cremier Cru Pomar. That's a red wine. Gorgeous. Very durable. We still have a little bit to sell the rest of you. And then this was a white wine that we had a Centenay. Centenay comes in red and white therefore Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. In this case this was the Bloch which is not a Cremier Cru necessarily but it is a named vineyard. It's called Clos de la Combesu. I think I said that right. And so it's a recognized vineyard. It doesn't have the official Cremier Cru or Grand Cru status but it's recognized by name because it is highly thought of and I think a lot of people thought highly of this wine the other night because it's sold like hotcakes. Again though we will have a little bit left over for the rest of you. This is to say though that what we served to the very wise people who pre-ordered a cheese and charcuterie platter we gave them this. Thank you Gabby. This is something that I'll have to lean a little bit so that you can kind of see the contents within. This is basically to advertise the fact that we can replicate this for you attending our wine bar as of today. And while supplies last we can keep giving you. I don't want to call them leftovers but we bought a lot of this brand new cheese. It's kind of hard to show you without picking it up and maybe having a bite. This is called, don't eat with your mouth full. I think I got that wrong. This is called a twerky. A twerky is a new cheese for us. That doesn't sound French and doesn't sound Spanish does it? It actually comes from the French side of the Pyrenees where the people are Basque. So that's a Basque name. And that's a hell of a good cheese. A little nutty. Tiny bit of caramel going on. Creamy. It's a little softer than a cheese you may already know called petite Basque. Another cheese made by the Basque folks. But this is a twerky. Comes in a much bigger wheel than the basque and therefore we cut sections of it. Now we'll be selling it downstairs but in the meantime it is a feature of our cheese splatter this weekend. I don't know what to do with this except to eat it later. Another feature is this cheese right here. Kind of hard to see. Let me bring it to you a little closer to the camera. This guy, that's a soft cheese. We like to do a firmer cheese and a soft cheese on your cheese splatter every time. This is called briot savourin. It killed it with the especially the white burgundies. It is in fact made in Burgundy and Normandy, France. Very very creamy creamy creamy triple cream cheese and delicious. I recommend any cheese served on your cheese splatter at home. Not cold but at room temperature and you'll find that this softens up to almost a flattening yumminess and you can in fact put it spread it on a croissant. Not a croissant necessarily in the baguette baguette slices and we just wanted to keep this as French as possible. However we had a departure with the meat. This meat I've got it better. I can show it to you better this way. This is from the Black Forest of Germany. Black Forest Schinken and really tasty smoky ham that we had and that can also appear if you do the cheese splatter with meat. You will get this this weekend and another feature. Not everybody is into this but we did show it to those who wanted it last Tuesday evening at the Burgundy event and we have some more. Here we have cornichons. Little pickles. Cute little pickles. You would see these especially on cheese boards in Paris and lo and behold pate. Pate. I must say this one is made with pork and turkey and chicken. No geese were harmed in the making of this pate. We know that not everybody is into this and so this is by request. You can have this as a complementary add-on to your cheese and charcuterie platter while supplies last. Okay so I think I covered everything that's on this delicious looking thing that I'll be working on later. Don't forget that we have Nico coming in a couple of weeks. Where's my bottle of? There it is. Grunello di Montalcino from Posse Colle which he may in fact be showing that evening along many many other Italian wines. Don't forget that we have two delicious flights and wines by the glass as well. Sparkling wine by the glass up here on the wine bar this week and don't forget that we have a very very special cheese platter that will go with Burgundy and just about anything else and therefore it'll be available while supplies last this weekend at the wine bar starting today. Okay thank you for watching. Thank you for everything you do. We'll see you soon.