Distinction.

In my opinion, the leaf of the Cabernet sauvignon (CS) vine is the most distinct of all Vitis vinifera varieties.  The very deeply, almost always overlapping (appearing as if the leaf is pierced with five holes) lobes on the leaf,  including the lyre-shaped petiolar sinus, make the CS leaf very recognisable.  (This specimen, photographed this morning, is wet because it rained overnight.)  By comparison, the leaf of a Chardonnay vine has extremely shallow sinuses and a petiolar sinus which is u-shaped.  I find ampelography, the field in botany that is concerned with the identification and classification of grapevines, fascinating. 
To my mind, nowadays, it is a distinct pity that wine made from CS grapes is not always recognisable as truly varietal in character (as is the grape variety's leaf).  Reflect upon the descriptors that self proclaimed Cab-lovers use to describe their favourite Cabs; jammy, bold, chewy, fruity, chocolate-y, smoky and, sometimes even, raisin-y (heaven forbid) etc.  What happened to the true characteristics of the varietal?  The finessed, medium-bodied clarets that I cut my wine drinking-teeth on, a wine with herbaceous undertones (pyrazines), tea leaves, damp earth, mint, cherries and violets, seem to be a thing of the past.  Cabernet sauvignon, où êtes-vous?  It's a vinous-conundrum.
Living in the Napa Valley doesn't exactly help my dilemma, either.  Napa is the poster child for big, intense, overblown, super extracted and high alcohol wines that are made to be consumed early.  There isn't a hope that the current style of CS being produced in the valley is chemically capable of aging for 20-30 years.  Perhaps I'm just getting old, my tastes are changing.  I'm okay with that.  That being said, I'm off to have a glass of an Austrian Grüner Veltliner.  Cheers!

The Helix.

My previous post, Four-Buck Chuck, made mention of an "innovative closure."  Meet the Helix.  The brainchild of Amorim (one of the planet's biggest cork producers) and O-I (a rather large bottle manufacturer), the Helix closure combines a grooved cork with a correspondingly threaded bottleneck.  Bronco Wine Company was an early adopter of the Helix cork stopper for several of their value-priced wines.
With the Helix there is no need to look around for a corkscrew, there is also no need to feel like one is slumming it by buying a screw cap closed wine.  Additionally, in some small way, the Helix manages to preserve the romance of opening a bottle of wine and the pleasant pop that a real cork delivers when it is coaxed out of a bottle.
I for one found the Helix to be a little hard to twist in and out (despite multiple printed exhortations suggesting otherwise), but I did find it rather interesting.  And innovative.

The flowering grapevine.

A. J. Winkler says, "To the casual observer the opening of a grape flower may seem to be very different from that of most other flowers, but the difference is not great."
I say, the Syrah vines are having a fine old time; flowers, corolla, pedicel, anther, pistil, filament, nectary and calyptra - the whole bloomin' lot.

The Chef's Market.

Tonight was the beginning of the 2012 Chef's Market season in downtown Napa, so Vinomaker and I, along with a couple of friends, ventured into town to grab a little something to eat and a glass of vino.  The event, which is held every Thursday evening through the summer months, entails several downtown Napa streets being blocked off and pedestrianised so that attendees can have free run of the locales surrounding First Street.  Beer and wine tents are dotted here and there throughout the area; one side street is dedicated to food trucks, another to children's activities and yet another to a traditional farmer's market.  There are cooking demonstrations, three stages of live music and lots of vendors selling anything from art to olive oil.

After walking the entire length of the Chef's Market to get a quick overview of what was on offer this week, and chatting to some friends I bumped into, it was time to eat.  I settled on a beef empanada (a Mexican pasty, basically) which I paired with a serviceable red wine - The Third Bottle from Gustavo Thrace.

I took quite a few photographs of the crowd, the vendors, the downtown Napa buildings, baskets piled high with produce etc., in order to see which image would best illustrate my post.  It was only when I was leaving First Street that I spotted this British racing green convertible Mini, replete with a pair of Wirehaired Pointing Griffon sentinels who let me stroke them, that I knew which pic to use.  

If only the Vinodogs were so well trained!

Photo taken with Instagram for Android.