Abraxas.

With it's tall Rhine-style bottle, Starbucks logo-like bronze medallion adorned label, single vineyard designation, and Vino-lock closure I approached my glass of Robert Sinskey's 2009 Abraxas with no preconceptions. What I discovered was a wonderful grapefruity, floral, light to medium bodied wine with vibrant acidity. A blend of 43% Pinot Gris, 23% Riesling, 17% Gewurtztraminer, and 13% Pinot Blanc this Alsacesque wine was just the thing for a lazy Sunday evening.

What a delightful tipple.

Vino-seal.

There is an ongoing, didactic discourse on certain wine blogs about which is the best closure for wine. It is an interesting topic, but sometimes the preachiness of it all gets a little tiresome. A screw cap can be a perfectly acceptable closure for a wine that you do not intend to age. Some proponents of the use of nothing but all natural cork are reaching ridiculous heights of brinkmanship, e.g. the folks at Celani Family Vineyards who feel the need to apprise the consumer of the exact size, to the closest millimetre, of the cork that bungs up their Cabernet sauvignon. I generally care more about what is in my glass, not how it manages to stay in the bottle.
One of the wines Vinomaker, I and everyone else drank after the christening, a week last Sunday, was a tasty offering from Sicily. It didn't really matter what the grape varietal was, we were all so enamoured with the Vino-seal closure that the contents of the bottle became secondary. Small things amuse...