By the time you’re reading this, I’m hoping that you’ve had some time to marvel at the new look and feel of the Vegas Wineaux website and blog.  Months of planning went into the development, and it was almost all lost about three weeks ago when my (now former) hosting company had serious server issues which caused my databases to be corrupted and my design and layouts to disappear.  In a nutshell, about six months of work was jettisoned because of the snafu.

But rather than cry about it, I fired them, found another company, fired THEM, and am now with a company based in San Francisco (just outside of Napa – can’t be a bad thing), and so far, they’ve been very helpful.  Not only that, I was able to retrieve years of postings which means that you guys are going to be treated to lots of golden oldies in the future!

So while the site isn’t as complete as planned, it is still ready to go even if it’s a little skinny in the content department.  But fear not … there’s so much more to come!

Enjoy the new site – it’s actually smaller than the previous one because I tried to be a lot more efficient while offering a few more bells and whistles. Watch for an upcoming YouTube slideshow on the changes.

I’m sitting here, late on a Sunday evening, finally able to sip a glass of a wonderful Rosé from Paso Robles . Who needs Champagne anyway!

Thanks so much for all of your patience and concern.  This has been a long undertaking, and there’s still more great stuff to come.  The disaster was merely a setback, a ripple in my schedule, but it has given me more. um, *opportunities* to plan for the futre. And I so appreciate my fellow wine lovers whom I’ve missed during my hermit months!

This is just the beginning. Stay tuned!

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I found this in my database archives.  I wrote it about three years ago and decided to dust it off for a new audience.  Since I’m involved in two home wine-tasting clubs – woo hoo Vegas Wineaux Wine Club! – I found this to be more relevant than ever. Enjoy this (Wineaux) blast from the past!

Whether you’re a guest or a host, there are some ideas that I’d like to share from my experiences in the fun world of home wine tastings. I have talked to a few people, overheard comments, observed, and listened to what people like (and don’t) at tastings. I hope these few pointers will be helpful.

Use what works for you and discard the rest! Let me know what you think, and don’t be afraid to add some of your own.

1. Please don’t wear cologne! Even if you smell wonderful, those who are trying to find the true nose of a great wine won’t appreciate your fragrance. Plain ol’ soap and water are fine.

From personal experience: Don’t brush your teeth immediately before drinking wine. It’s the whole “I-just-brushed-my-teeth-and-then-drank-orange-juice” thing. Crest will crush your palate.

3. Whenever possible, try to remember to bring your own glass(es). While there are a few exceptions (compulsive wine-glass hoarders like me), most people don’t have a large inventory of wine glasses. Bringing your own will make things easier for your hosts (less washing later), and give you your preferred choice of glasses if there are multiple wine types. I found a great tallish padded lunch case that I use – along with a cardboard insert – to carry either four regular glasses or a couple of big Reidels. About twelve bucks at Target.

4. If you’re hosting, consider a “pre-wine” for those who arrive early and pitch in to help. That is kind of a tradition with one club I belong to, and it not only encourages people to arrive on time, it also allows the host to share a couple of those treasures he may have stashed away.  A pre-wine is usually a wine that is light, low in alcohol, but tasty and refreshing.  And, generally, cheap.

5. While gourmet meals are always appreciated, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t forget that Costco, Sam’s Club, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods (especially Henderson or Town Square), and a host of others offer a variety of pre-cooked or high-quality convenience foods to serve during tastings. Veggie and fruit trays are available at every market, and breads and cheeses are always welcome. As the host, your company is as important as, well, your *company*!

6. If you have a small place, host anyway! If you have to limit the number of guests, then so be it. I have an its place, but am fortunate enough to have a big back yard. I know others who have homes so large that you could move in with a third-world country and never be noticed. And still others who have tiny places perfect for their needs. Host, and host what you can. No one will feel put out just because you can’t accommodate the crowd that wants to hang out with you at your place! Believe me, they’ll find another tasting … !

7. As a guest, don’t be shy about throwing in a couple of extra bucks to help cover some of the cost of food as well as the wines. I’ve been to some pretty awesome tastings where the food was to die for, and wanted to help cover some of the costs. I’ve also appreciated when people decided on their own to throw in a couple of extra dollars when I’ve hosted. Not only does that encourage more people to host (or the people who love to host, to host more often), but it makes it easier for folks to make the decision. Of course, when everyone brings food, that makes it a lot easier all around.

8. Whether a host or a guest, try to have flyers or other information about the wines that you’re serving. I have placed info about wines online from time to time and have had flyers on some of the nicer ones. I still have flyers (very handy if the PC craps out) from tastings I have been to in the past; and in at least one case, that resulted in more Zinfandels than I ever thought I’d own! (long story) And you might want to have recipes for your food creations available, too!

9. If you want to serve a wine that may be a little pricey, don’t be afraid to get measured pourers! I was introduced to this wonderful concept by Fritz Reese at the wine class he teaches at Community and finally bought some of my own. These pourers ensure that everyone gets some wine (a *real* taste, LOL), and they can be removed after everyone is served when people can pour as much as they want. I found them on Amazon dot com for about $14.00 for four 1-1/2 oz pourers. They are easily hand washable, but don’t do well in garbage disposals. Don’t ask.

With that being said, if you have a truly old, fine wine, the process of pouring with one these pourers will stir up any sediment unless you’ve already decanted the wine.

10. After all of these suggestions, don’t be afraid to host! Not feeling sure? ASK SOMEBODY! There are several people in my life who have had to tolerate the panic attacks I have before each tasting, and I couldn’t have gotten through it without them. Not because it’s difficult, but because panic is what I do and I do it well. Their help was invaluable and made the hosting experience easy, fun, and educational for all my guests. There are those of us who’d be more than willing to help out and give a hand wherever necessary. Just ask! If you’re still not too sure if you want to host at your place, don’t be afraid to “co-host” a tasting. I’ve done it and it’s been a success every time.

If it weren’t in a gazillion different newspapers, I never would have believed it.

South African vineyard owners are having a problem with monkeys. Baboons, to be exact. Apparently, Baboons really like wine grapes, and they have turned into marauding hordes. (I always wanted to use that in a sentence!) Wine growers are having a beast of a time trying to keep the baboons away from the ripening grapes. This is fall in South Africa and harvest is here. But it may not add to much with the baboons eating the grapes. While gophers, squirrels, deer, and rabbits are the vermin that American grape growers have to deal with – they’ve never had to deal with baboons!

Don’t believe me? Here’s the story from the Associated Press:

JOHANNESBURG – Baboons, it seems, prefer pinot noir. They also like a nice chardonnay. Largely undeterred by electric fences, hundreds of wild baboons in South Africa’s prized wine country are finding the vineyards of ripe, succulent grapes to be an “absolute bonanza,” said Justin O’Riain of the University of Cape Town.

Winemakers have resorted to using noisemakers and rubber snakes to try to drive the baboons off during harvest season.

“The poor baboons are driven to distraction,” said O’Riain, who works in the university’s Baboon Research Unit.

“As far as baboons are concerned, the combination of starch and sugar is very attractive — and that’s your basic grape,” he said.

Growers say the picky primates are partial to sweet pinot noir grapes, adding to the winemakers’ woe: Pinot noir sells for more than the average merlot or cabernet sauvignon.

“They choose the nicest bunches, and you will see the ones they leave on the ground. If you taste them, they are sour,” said Francois van Vuuren, farm manager at La Terra de Luc vineyards, 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Cape Town. “They eat the sweetest ones and leave the rest.”

Baboons have raided South Africa’s vineyards in the past, but farmers say this year is worse than previous ones because the primates have lost their usual foraging areas due to wildfires and ongoing expansion of grape-growing areas.

Out of a 12-ton harvest, 1,100 to 1,300 pounds (500 to 600 kilograms) go to waste at La Terra de Luc because of the baboons.

In the Constantia wine-producing area alone, up to $34,800 worth of the crop has been lost annually in previous years, according to the Baboon Research Unit.

One farm, La Petite Ferme, was hit particularly hard after fires in the Franschhoek wine-producing region devastated large swaths of land, burning up the baboons’ normal foraging areas. The primates then descended on its chardonnay crop, eating or destroying up to three tons of grapes.

La Petite Ferme usually produces 12 to 15 barrels of chardonnay a year, but this season only managed to produce three, said farm manager Mark Dendy-Young.

“It was bad timing,” Dendy-Young said.

Sometimes the baboons even get an alcohol kick — by feasting on discarded grape skins that have fermented in the sun. After gobbling up the skins, the animals stumble around before sleeping it off in a shady spot.

During harvest season from January to March, winemakers put up serious front-line defenses. Some try to scare off the baboons by blowing into horns called “vuvuzelas” that are often used by South Africa’s soccer fans.

Electric fencing often doesn’t work because baboons can dig underneath it or swing above it from trees to get to the vineyards, O’Riain said. They also test the fence for weak spots. If they’re shocked, they’ll scream, but they’ll likely return the next day, he said.

Like other farm managers, Van Vuuren has noticed that the baboons follow a pattern, usually arriving about 10 a.m.

“Every day, they come at the same time. … The guys chase the baboons, blowing vuvuzelas, and they chase them back up the mountain. But sometimes they only move a few meters (yards) and then they sit there, looking at you.”

Sakkie Lourens, manager of Cabriere farm, uses rubber snakes to scare the baboons away.

“I put them all over where the vines are, and since then, I haven’t seen a single baboon,” he said.

Ryno Reyneke of the Cape Chamonix farm said the attacks peak at harvest time. He hires baboon monitors to scare the animals away with noise. Some farmers also plant grapes outside their fence line, a sacrificial offering that reduces the number of primate trespassers.

The Baboon Research Unit is pioneering a high-tech approach in which a collar with a sensor is placed on a member of a baboon troop. When the collar passes a particular point, an “incoming baboon” text message is sent to a cell phone, prompting someone to race to the fence and defend the vineyard from the troop.

O’Riain doesn’t think the problem will go away because vineyards are expanding into the lower slopes of the mountains, the baboons’ traditional foraging grounds.

“Where there’s a mountain, there’s a baboon,” O’Riain said. “As we take up more and more of their land, the conflict increases.”a

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Along with the update of the new site, there’s all kinds of things going on here in Wineaux-land.  Here’s great new information on the Combatting Swirl Envy classes, based on an earlier post.  Enjoy!

We get a lot of questions asking about our special (that means “different”) wine classes, and what the heck’s going on!

Well, this ain’t yo’ Momma’s Wine 101.

In fact, except for educating the palate, there’s very little about actual wine that’s talked about. It’s all about progressing from wine neophyte to wine snob.

Let me tell you a little about my history.

For nearly twenty years, I have been doing some sort of adult training, education, and instruction. The lion’s share of this experience has been in the Information Technology (computer) field. Hey, I know DOS! In addition, the last year has seen me developing and teaching leadership and psychology courses (ah! the pleasures of education!) which have proven to be popular and successful.

When I first came to Las Vegas over 16 years ago, I was the new kid on the block in the IT Department. That meant that I got the, um, “less than desirable” teaching assignments. And I enthusiastically made them my own.

In the Information Technology area, one of my favorite courses was called “PC Basics.” I loved this class because I was able to take folks who were completely clueless about computers and turn them into PC whiz kids. So what was it about this class that made it so special? After all, there were lots of classes on Word Processing, Spreadsheets, How to Create Graphics, How to Use an Email System, blah blah blah. My place in this schema was simple: how can you create a spreadsheet if you don’t even know how to turn on a computer? If you don’t know what the buttons on a mouse mean or how to hold it, then the concept of “point and click” is meaningless. So I took my students by the hand (figuratively speaking), and led them into the fascinating world of bits and bytes. And made fanatics of nearly all of them.

I took that same philosophy into the world of wine. How can the concepts of regions, varietals, and terroir make sense if you don’t know how to hold a wine glass correctly? What good is a restaurant wine list going to do for you if the language makes no sense? And, most importantly, how can you look cool among a bunch of wine snobs?

That’s where Vegas Wineaux and Combatting Swirl Envy come in! I planned this around the concept of ushering students through the very basics of wine … it is even *pre* Wine 101! It’s all about understanding less than the basics so that the most elementary of wine classes makes sense. I decided to assist students in sharpening their observation skills, honing their wine drinking skills, and learning how to understand and conduct themselves during a wine tasting – whether it’s at a store, an event (think UNLVino), or a winery. In other words, they are so comfortable with the very basics that they are more than ready to really learn about wines and to kick their skills up notches unknown by mankind. (thanks, Emeril). They are also more at ease in their own familiarity of setting up their home wine collections and sharing their wines with (sometimes better wine-educated) friends.

Has this helped students who attended my “live” classes? I’ve made many of them into wine fanatics just as I made my PC folks into computer geeks! They can’t wait to get into the next level of wine classes! What’s even more fun is that they scoff at those people on TV and in the movies who don’t even “get” basic wine tasting etiquette. (“He gets paid millions of dollars and can’t even hold a damn glass right!”) Love it!

So what’s in the future for Vegas Wineaux? Why hasn’t there been classes recently? What’s going on?!? Look for Combatting Swirl Envy classes online!  The costs – both in money and time – of gas and travel make it difficult for many potential wine geeks to attend live classes, and just as difficult for me to plan them. In addition, since Vegas is a 24/7 town, what’s great for my schedule isn’t great for everybody’s. So I decided to go global! Combatting Swirl Envy in the form of videos will be available to online subscribers, with the target date yet to be decided.  I will have much more information on that very soon.

That doesn’t mean that live classes are out of the question, of course. In fact, wine-free wine classes are in development for those who want to learn about wine etiquette but don’t want to drink wines. Yes, that makes sense.  Grabbing people for DUI’s is a great income stream for the boys in blue (okay, technically it’s khaki here in Vegas.  Irrelevent.)

If you’ve just moseyed by and are liking what you see here, be sure to subscribe.  RSS will notify you of each time an update is made here on the site, but subscribing by email will get you an occasional newsletter that will keep you up to date on plans, activities, and more which may not make it to the site.

Enjoy it all! I’m so happy to see that the subscriber list is growing and that many of you are dropping wonderful notes and emails of encouragement and enthusiasm. Stay with us and watch us as we grow!

All of us enjoy drinking wines that are “highly rated” by the various wine gods and goddesses out there. For most wineries, a Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, Robert Parker, Jancis Robinson, Wine & Food, or other well-known wine rating source is practically a guarantee of a sold-out vintage.

Something you may not know is that wineries submit their wines for ratings. So what? That means that there are many wineries out there that do not submit, and therefore go “unrated” and unrecognized. I’ve learned this over the years from speaking with smaller wineries. They have very limited production that produces just enough for their club members and for limited online sales. Their logic is simple. Why have a wine rated that won’t be easily available for sale? Makes sense to me. When I look at the numbers of cases produced by the wineries – ranging from as little as 25 to as many as 250 – the need for the nod of approval from the big guys is impractical.

Every now and then you may come across a wine that’s really delicious, a good value, or one that you’d like to know more about. No ratings anywhere!! Now what?

How about ratings for the real world? If you haven’t done so yet, you have to go to CellarTracker. It is a website developed by one of the members of the Mark Squires wine forum and has been a great success. It allows members/users to track the contents of their cellars. In addition, it has an area for “community tasting notes”; that is, regular folks like us who have enjoyed the wines that you like and have left their own ratings. People have widely different tastes which accounts for some of the wide ranges of scores, however, many of the wines have incredible consistency from taster to taster and the scores reflect that, as well.

For instance, I looked up the ratings on a Sauvignon Blanc that I’d opened, tasted, and realized that it was pure dreck. It was from a very well-known maker of super high-end reds, but this was more than a shock. I’d paid a bit of a hefty price for the name and was stunned at the poor quality. A quick look on CellarTracker told me that I wasn’t alone. One of the members recommended that this winery stick with its reds. What was interesting is the feeling that people couldn’t believe that *this winemaker* could make something so incredibly mediocre, and the tasters doubted their own palates.

However, it’s not always bad news. I looked up Four Vines Heretic, and saw that the community scores were consistently in the 90’s for this big, beautiful Petit Sirah. So glad that I have several bottles!

The reviews are interesting, and the people are quite frank about their likes and dislikes. They will tell you what foods paired well, other wines at the occasion (if any), and will sometimes even give you the price if they remember. The abilities of the tasters range from relatively novice to winery owners. People’s collections range from less than a dozen to numbering in the thousands. A good mix of wine folks.

Check out CellarTracker and let me know what you think!

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