I can’t help but feel excited and playful what with Open That Bottle Night on tap for tomorrow night and a few very cool new projects in the queue (more on those later…). So today I bring to you a sampling of lighthearted highlights from my wine reading this week.

Let’s start with the most whimsical piece and go from there, shall we?

Let’s face it:  most of us spend way too much time at our computers, for better or worse. Anytime someone figures out a way to help us play while we work, I’m all for it. From Arwye Wan and the folks at Yanko Designs comes not only the wine cork USB memory stick, but now also the flash drive. This is user-friendly wine love if I ever saw it. Check them out!

Next, we have Girl Scout Cookies! What? Yep. America’s favorite seasonal treat (or so I think) meets wine at the hand of Doug Morris, of Old Town Bread, Co.. Girl Scouts of South Eastern Massachusetts is holding their annual fundraiser, where Chef’s from some of our favorite – and finest – local restaurants will participate in the name of the cookie, or well, the Girl Scouts who sell them. With such an illustrious team in the kitchen, it’s a bit surprising wine hasn’t entered the picture to date. Katie Curley of The Daily News reported, “a surprise entry from Morris will be a savory cookie of smoked salmon with a red wine reduction on cinnamon-flavored Girl Scouts’ Daisy Go Round Cookies.” Check out Curley’s article to learn more about the Who’s Who in Culinary & Cookies, or click this link and go to “Cookie Creations” to support the event. (Hotel Commonwealth, March 12, 6-8pm)

Finally, in what was meant to be a more sobering article about wine and the economy, I found Inside Bay Area‘s recent article on marketing high-end wine in a down economy fairly positive. Here are three reasons I feel this way:

1. Guerilla marketing, if you will, among some of the more high end wine producers of California might mean good news for consumers. The folks at Honig and Cakebread, for example, plan to take more of their wares on the road, giving consumers a greater opportunity to taste and enjoy their high-end wines locally.

2. If you’ve been sitting on a wine club waiting list since before dirt, this may be your moment to get in on the fun. There should be more high-end juice available with sales generally lower. This means there’s more to go around for folks who aren’t local and want “in” via special Club-only shipments.

3. Finally, just this week Boston natives Peter and Diana Merriam opened their new Napa tasting room – but they’re not giving up production of one of their best value “high end” wines, which clocks in at $35. Count on 4.5 glasses of fun for a mere $7.77 each; that’s pretty great value, if you think of it. Plus, the Merriams will be offering custom crush to other folks; it’ll be interesting to see what – or who – else comes out of their new digs, given how high a bar they’ve set for themselves.

All in all, not a bad week for wine! Let’s top it off, shall we? Be sure to OPEN THAT BOTTLE!

There’s something great about finding something you thought had long been lost, or even just finding something you had long forgotten. The idea is the same. There is a magic to the rediscovery, almost heightening your original experience because of the novelty of the find.

This happened to me a couple of years ago when my mom had us go through our respective “boxes” of childhood stuff to consolidate our treasures. I remember finding a terrific array of goodies from my first “club”, where I was deemed Secretary. I was – and still am – completely humored by the fact that my newsletter writing style and go-get-’m/take-no-prisoners/ra-ra approach as an 8 year old lived on in my daily correspondence with colleagues in 2006. Funny stuff.

Carmenere is to 19th Century Bordeaux, France as my email writing style today is to 1987. Just imagine researchers’ surprise and delight in the mid 1990s when the Carmenere grape was found alive and well in Chile – after it was long thought distinct due to the onset of phylloxera in Bordeaux. Difficult to replant and prone to disease because of the weather conditions in Bordeaux, Carmenere (one of the 6 original “noble” varieties of Bordeaux) was considered a lost cause and not replanted after the phylloxera epidemic. Somehow, someway, Carmenere grape plantings arrived in Chile – and the varietal thrived in its new dry, warm habitat. The ‘funny’ thing is this varietal was thought to be Merlot…. for quite a long time Chilean “Merlot” was distinct. Finally, in 1994, research was undertaken to sort things out – and Carmenere’s true identity and history were revealed.

Today Carmenere is not just used as a blending grape, but known in its own right as one of Chile’s best single varietal wines. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tasted a lot of bad Carmenere, with bitter, stemmy flavors and a distinct green bell pepper vegetal quality dominating. But when it’s on, it’s on. Good examples show tremendous depth for a “middle-weight”, including red and dark fruits, a touch of earthiness, tobacco and leather, as well as a distinct smokey character or even a mocha/dark chocolate element. No kidding. All that in a bottle of wine!

Just this week I retasted the well-known 2007 Terra Noble Grand Reserva  Carmenere.  It’s smokiness and darker tones (e.g. dried herbs, tobacco and leather) made me channel a great big stew of lamb, carrots and potatoes,  sitting in front of my (theoretical) fireplace. I realized somehow thus far I had neglected to share this something new/something old with my readers. Well, better late than never! This wine will certainly carry us through the inevitably blustery March right on into Spring, when our barbecues will be ripe for action thereafter.

But as I said, there’s a lot of Carmenere on the market and it doesn’t always delight. Chile is, after all, an up and coming area experiencing a few growing pains. And I think Carmenere may be more of an acquired taste than an automatic winner for most consumers. No surprise then, today’s question is:

What’s your experience with Carmenere?

I first discovered red wine could be a great way to settle an upset stomach several years ago on my first trip to the wine country of Napa/Sonoma. We were caravanning to our first stop and I was sitting in the back of the car, in the awkward center seat. As we wound through the mountain roads my stomach began to fail me and my head began to pound. We arrived at Meeker before my nausea took a turn for the worst. Of course I was eager to keep it that way and found myself a bench outside the tasting room, hoping the cool air would cure what ailed me.  Ten minutes later though I was not feeling any better. I was terribly disappointed with the situation. The tasting room had just opened – and this was only our first stop of the day.

I’m not sure if he was simply trying to rally me or if he had had some previous experience with the situation, but my brother came out to get me, claiming a glass of red wine would settle my stomach. The idea of tasting (let alone actually drinking) a glass of wine was not exactly something I felt up for – but we were there to taste and I was determined to play ball. I took his word for it and headed into the tasting room.

Who knew, but within a few minutes I was back on my game. My head had cleared and my stomach had stopped lurching. I wasn’t sure if it was the larger context that did the trick or if it was in fact the wine, but I didn’t really care.

I’m not sure if I ever gave this one-time experience any more deliberate thought until last Thursday.  I had rallied to go into the shop for work, suffering from bizarre stomach pains and a touch of nausea. We were so in the weeds from the long weekend I couldn’t bring myself to call in sick; and sometimes being active and having something else to focus on is just what you need. But an hour into things I was still not feeling so hot. And then one of my favorite reps popped in with a couple of reds for me to taste. He took one look at me, agreed I was not in top form, but offered the same idea as my brother: a touch of good red wine might just do the trick.

Once again, within just a few minutes, I was feeling markedly improved. Within the hour I was completely “cured”.

Over the weekend I spent quite a bit of time researching this phenomenon, trying to find out what about a glass of (good) red wine could be responsible for settling an upset stomach. It’s amazing how much information there is circulating the webwaves about red wine and health as well as red wine causing stomach distress. But nothing emerged to validate my own experiences.

So today I’m throwing a couple of questions to all of you out there…

Have you had a similar experience, where a glass of red wine settled your stomach?

And for you medically inclined folks, what could be the reason for this?

I think a lot about wine. I think a lot about sports. I think a lot about the weather (granted, often I’m dreaming of warmer, sunnier climates).  Truth be told, I think a lot and when I get something in my head, it really sinks its teeth in.

Case in point: for weeks I’ve known today I would post about Open That Bottle Night, a little something Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher from the Wall Street Journal dreamt up ten years ago. Their idea? To give people an “excuse” to open that bottle of wine they’ve been saving. It’s the “Just Do It!” for wine lovers around the world – because, let’s face it, it can be hard to decide which occasion is special enough to cause you to pop the cork on that bottle you’ve been saving for the last 20 years.

I’ve been amped up since the Super Bowl about OTBN, I can’t lie. I find February is the longest month of the year. By the end of the cold, damp, snowy eck of Feburary, I have wicked Spring Fever. Fortunately, OTBN happens every last Saturday of February. It is like a little light of hope at the end of the tunnel. A little light of goodness – whether I waited too long to open that bottle or not! There’s no football the next day to look forward to either, so you can plan a fabulous brunch instead.

I’ve been biding my time to put together this little Friday post to remind everyone they have just one week to plan accordingly – whether it’ll just be you and your hunny, or a small group of your most appreciative wine friends.  But in my great anticipation and enthusiasm, I couldn’t help asking around to find out who has what planned….

Wouldn’t you know it, I haven’t heard one plan yet. People. How can you forget this wondrous event is just one weekend away? Worse yet, how can you not know we are not just Opening That Bottle, but we’re celebrating the 10th year of the event! Just to check if I am going crazy, a random lack of publicity for this momentous evening, I will now Google “open that bottle night”.

1,610,000 entries loaded for 2009 alone.

Huh.

Well, if you didn’t know, now you know! Open That Bottle Night is not to be missed! If you don’t have a bottle of 10 or 20 or 5 year old anything, it doesn’t matter. It’s about the spirit of the occasion – of opening something you wouldn’t just uncork with dinner – or something that, frankly, needs an excuse to be opened lest it be lost to the wine gods forever. For me, I think it will be a bottle of Spanish wine my best friend brought back from Barcelona for me after her wedding there. (I attended the Turkish Cypriat festivities, but couldn’t make the trip to Barcelona for part deux. Her father-in-law is quite the vino lover, hand-selecting the wines for the occasion. I was sorry to have missed it! And my friend brought back one of the two remaining bottles for me to enjoy.)

So put on your party hat and get ready to raid your collection! We have 8 days and counting….

What are your plans for February 28th OTBN?

Like the growers champagne tasting I attended in December, the ones I make a real point to get to are not run of the mill, but more of a treat. HD for wine lovers, if you will. Last week I had the pleasure of attending two Burgundy 2007 tastings. The Sorting Table and Wildman & Sons were in town to share their portfolio of 2007 Burgs with the trade.

Burgundy is considered one of the most difficult regions in the world to work. Pinot Noir is an incredibly finicky grape and the climatic conditions each year are just as challenging. No surprise, these are really special events where invitees taste wines that can go for as much as $300+/bottle.

These tastings are also incredibly challenging to attend. Because of the timing of the event – just a few months post-harvest – the wines are typically barrel samples, which have been ‘bottled’ for the tastings here in the States; they are meant to give us a taste of what these wines will become. And by “become” I mean in quite a while…. Burgundy’s reds (almost exclusively Pinot Noir) are not thought to come into their prime for at least another decade, and sometimes as much as three. The whites (almost exclusively Chardonnay) can also be aged for quite some time.

The 2007 vintage is said to be one of the most difficult in recent memory – but producing solid wines for those who tended their vines methodically, with tremendous care throughout the ups and downs of the vintage cycle. It was a long, warm spring suggesting an earlier harvest would be necessary. But it proceeded to rain, with temps consistently below average, throughout July and August. Finally in late August the sun decided to shine again and the northern winds arrived to dry things out in September. For those who really worked hard all vintage to give the grapes a chance – and then waited to pick – the fruit was ripe enough to produce concentrated, nuanced wines.

Those with greater experience tasting young Burgundy argue the Chardonnays are more consistently better than the Pinots in ’07. For my part, though I hesitate to generalize, at each tasting I found the whites, indeed, were very vibrant, delightfully unadulterated and rightly displaying their characteristic minerality and searing acidity. The reds I tasted were mixed; the best offered the lovely concentrated fruit, nuanced earthiness and tremendous finesse one should expect from great Burgundy, while others were more diluted and characterless.

For the sake of this post (and my lengthy word count) I’ve deliberately refrained from going into greater detail about each of the specific (important) sub-regions within Burgundy – and the villages within these – which do make a difference on the predominant characteristics of a given red/white Burgundy. I fully encourage you to dig deeper to learn more about each. But, for a report on the 2007 vintage, definitely check out this resource. Very helpful, delightfully nerdy information therein.

Have you experienced great Burgundy? What vintage was the wine?